A few years ago I decided out of the blue while on vacation in Kauai that our whole family would attend an Ash Wednesday mass to mark the beginning of Lent. I knew it could go either way. These services rely on a priest who understands how to gently hold everything together which isn’t always the reality.
I’ve not written for a while. Like all of us trying to come up with different topics and angles for blog content, I’ve felt like I reached my limits for new ideas.
This week threw me for a loop though. A client who I’ve been working with for only a short time called to let me know how much the work we’ve been doing together has helped her. In my work I have to say that isn’t unusual to hear but I’ve seen a huge change in this particular client.
And this experience has finally inspired me to write again
We boarded the plane, content, suntanned and happy, full of positive emotions and two weeks of great memories. As we fastened our seatbelts the pilot warned us to expect a few bumpy moments after take-off.
I follow a lot of business blogs and although I enjoy them, I see a nonstop necessity to go at full speed. In reality, in my work as a therapist and coach who mostly focuses on emotions, I realize that we are often limited by things that happen in our daily lives.
Today, my daughter asked me what my New Year’s resolution was. I told her I would like to be calmer and truth be told this was a resolution that I made several times last year. In 2017 I was trying to be calmer, or to put it another way, clinically-manage my frustration tolerance better. I improved but not as much as I wanted to. I think the reason for my failure was that I hadn’t fully embraced why I lose my cool.I hadn’t fully accepted that I use frustration to avoid being direct.
Don’t let who you are stop you from being what you could be. -Jordan Peterson
It’s the little things that can make a big difference in preventing us from achieving our goals in life.
What is that little thing that you do that stops you from getting to where you want to be? For most of us, it’s more than one area that holds us back from fulfilling our potential.
How can you work on that today?
A client made this for me after a recent session. She was describing how work and life were going well but, you know, everything could be better. So I replied to her good is good.
All due respect to Elton John, but I’ve found acceptance—not ‘sorry’—seems to be the hardest word.
We crave it on an almost cellular level—in fact, our very existence was once tied to acceptance from our tribe. Today, we seek it all the wrong places from the size of our paycheck to our number of “likes” on Facebook. We search for it from strangers and spouses alike. We try to fill our acceptance vacuum with everything from boxed wine and Netflix to spin class and Xanax.
It’s become a predictable but all too common phenomenon: A beloved celebrity dies, and the social media blame games begin. As news of a celebrity death spreads across our screens, most people act, well, as decent human beings.
We experience the shared grief and sadness at a life lost too soon or celebrate a long life lived well. As the comments, tweets and remembrances roll in, most people express sadness, kindness, and loss with respect.
One of the biggest tricks to plugging in and thinking possible is finding your flavor.
Why do I use the word “flavor”? Because I want to help you to get you out of your head and into your heart and soul. So much of our programming has to do with thinking. And thinking is great! For some things. We need our thinking brain for math and science and maps and all kinds of other logic-based reasoning, but what we know about happiness is that it is NOT one size fits all principle. There is no one correct solution for everyone, the way there might be to a math or science problem. Therefore thinking only is not the sole key toward achieving happiness. We must also include the heart.
