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 …
Many of us are familiar with the painful pattern of engaging in certain behaviors while simultaneously recognizing that those behaviors are not to our benefit. We experience ourselves as innocent bystanders, helplessly watching the train that is our self-sabotage rip by us, immune and indifferent to our muffled pleas for it to stop. The solution …
Why We Keep Doing That Same Annoying Thing Again And Again And Again… Read More »
In our western culture, much of the emphasis on personal work is oriented towards self-improvement. Self-improvement is wonderful. It is not my intention to demonize it. What I want to point out are two things: 1) An exclusive focus on self-improvement risks becoming another avoidance strategy. A means of getting away from ourselves right now. …
When we “should” ourselves, we are basically telling ourselves that who we are in this moment is not ok. This is a type of self-abandonment. “I shouldn’t be angry,” is a statement that both makes my anger wrong and, more fundamentally, makes me wrong for having my anger. I am communicating to myself that how …
“Situation ‘Y’ Triggered Feelings Of ‘X’ In Me” My clients are all too familiar with this intervention. It is an invitation to deliberately change their language in a straightforward, albeit slightly awkward, way. In this post, I argue that using this language (externally and internally) saves us from positioning ourselves as victims, and puts power …
Personal Empowerment Achieved Through a Shift in Language Read More »
