Be Yourself

Be yourself

“Be Yourself”, says Henri Nouwen, in today’s daily Bread for the Journey reflection. Wise and comforting advice for us all! “Often we want to be somewhere other than where we are, or even to be someone other than who we are. We tend to compare ourselves constantly with others and wonder why we are not as rich, as intelligent, as simple, as generous, or as saintly as they are. Such comparisons make us feel guilty, ashamed, or jealous. It is very

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How Do You Know You Can Trust?

know you can trust

Trust is built one marble at a time (Dr. Brene Brown) How you do you know you can trust someone? How do you know you can trust yourself? I’m pretty sure most if not all of us have struggled with trust at numerous points in our personal or professional lives. I certainly have.  For example, I struggle with trusting others when I share something in confidence with a “friend”, only to later discover that this person shared my information with others.

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What It Takes To Get Back Up

To Get Back Up

If we are brave enough, often enough, we will fail. This is a book about what it takes to get back up. (Dr. Brene Brown, from the cover of Rising Strong) She’s back!  Last week Dr. Brene Brown, TED talk sensation and author of two New York Times bestsellers released her  much anticipated new book, Rising Strong. I read Rising Strong in one sitting this past weekend (just couldn’t stop!), and am excited to recommend it to anyone who is struggling to re-group

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Paying Attention To The People You Love

How well are you paying attention to the people you love?  Do these people really know they matter to you? Using John Lennon’s analogy, are you doing enough to “water” the relationships that are important to you? When, for whatever reason, we lose our willingness to invest the time, energy and emotion it takes to keep an important relationship alive and thriving, we can bring great heartache to family members and friends we love, or with whom we have had a deep connection. In the midst of our own busy

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Hard To Take

Hard To Take

Criticism and blame can be hard to take, especially when we feel wrongly attacked, or unfairly picked on. When we’re on the receiving end,  it’s easy to get defensive and feel like striking back. Even when we feel like striking back, we can choose to respond in ways that will deescalate rather than intensify the tension. We can listen differently. We can apologize for the part of the criticism that we can understand or agree with. We can clarify our own position– which

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Life Structures Can Help

Life Structures Can Help

Life structures can help us reach our goals and become the person we want to be.  Life structures come in all shapes and sizes, and the number of them we can create is unlimited. An exercise class is a life structure that helps maintain fitness. A shopping list is a life structure that  helps ensure a shopping experience guided by needs, not wants. A weekly housekeeper or designated “cleaning day” is a life structure that helps eliminate mess. A menu plan is a

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A Healthy Balance

  It’s important to find a healthy balance between doing what we think we need to do, and being the kind of person we want to be. Most of us tend to focus more at our doing than at our being. We spend our lives trying to make something of ourselves, trying to have an impact, trying to be reasonably successful in this world. We work hard to accomplish our goals and teach our children to do the same. Our culture’s ethos of achievement feeds this focus,

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Unsatisfied With Your Life? You Get To Choose

Unsatisfied with your life? Fortunately, you get to choose the attitudes and behaviors that will increase your level of satisfaction! This article by Joshua Becker,  9 Easy Ways To Become Unsatisfied with Life, provides an excellent opportunity for life reflection and the creation of a more satisfied reality. My husband and I had great fun discussing this article over our morning coffee time today. The article easily generated a lively conversation about life satisfaction and specific focus areas where we both want to grow. In essance, we took turns answering these questions: Of the article’s nine

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Receiving Well

Receiving well is one of the greatest gifts we can give each other. It is a powerful-though often neglected-way of honoring another person. Yet most of us do better at giving well. We find it easier to give our love and support to others than to receive the love and support of others. When I worked with dying patients and their families as medical social worker at Mercy Hospice-Johnston, this idea of honoring others by receiving well was a topic

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