- By Meg Beeler
Imagine letting go of your stuck, heavy energy and releasing it so you feel lighter, more radiant, more connected. Imagine being supported as you shift into your heart, opening to the beautiful world around you. Imagine...
It’s easy to be kind or loving to someone you like. Why should you bother to be loving toward the contemptuous, the hateful, the miserable, or people who are simply annoying?
I know some remarkable people, even some who are considered great human beings, but I have never known anyone whose heart is open all the time. Even the Dalai Lama speaks of anger arising and of saying things that, much to his chagrin, can never be taken back. Forgiveness of oneself and others is...
We all experience everyday annoyances with the people around us. What turns an irksome characteristic, situation, or event into a source of continued frustration? It’s our expectations, our “shoulds” that cause aggravation and annoyance...
Prior to becoming a therapist, I believed as the majority of people still do, that trauma and subsequent PTSD are experienced by only a small portion of the population and limited primarily to combat soldiers and first responders such as firefighters, police and EMT’s; as well as residents of war-torn countries and victims of catastrophic events.
Depression is listed as the leading cause of disability worldwide. Yet research shows depression is far more prevalent in Western cultures, such as the US, Canada, France, Germany and New Zealand, than in Eastern cultures, such as Taiwan, Korea, Japan and China.
- By Betsy Chasse
Why is it that so many of us feel we need crisis in order to face our fears, to bring about the change we already know we need to undertake? After my last big crisis, I asked myself this question. It seemed my crisis meter had an alarm clock and every ten years I brought about a doozy.
The work I do isn’t “my” work. These are ideas whose time has come and they need capable scribes. Our true wages in life consist of the satisfaction we get from a job well done. Aside from that, well, the rain falls on the just and unjust alike.
We have little control over the future. And the future is where we tend to look for our security, seeking the assurance that everything will be all right. The illusion is that we have control over many variables in our daily life and that...
Fear drives our impulses to forcibly control others, and to try and make the whole world behave as we want. Fear stimulates our mistrust of one another. It fosters close-mindedness, terror, judgment, bullying, frustration, and the awful destruction of human-on-human violence. Fear explains why...
Regret gets a bad press. It is a painful emotion experienced upon realising that a different decision would have led to a better outcome.
- By Alan Cohen
Perhaps you have questioned or judged yourself for being too sensitive or not feeling at home in the mainstream. When I ask my seminar audiences, “How many of you believe or have been told that you’re weird?” Almost everyone raises their hand.
As I was walking through the V&A museum in London a few days ago, two statues immediately grabbed my attention. It was Heraclitus and Democritus, a couple of Greek thinkers known as the “weeping and laughing philosophers”.
What could I do to enhance the enjoyment or fulfillment of this action? Or, how would I relate to this action if my goal was to get as much enjoyment or fulfillment as possible out of it?
- By Erika Flint
If you have trouble losing excess weight, it's likely that your body and mind are conspiring to keep that extra weight on you. When you're bored or sad or upset, the brain's natural tendency is to make the body do something to feel better, and food provides the immediate gratification.
Have you ever told a friend experiencing a troubling situation “I know exactly how you feel”? This empathic response is usually driven by a connection we’ve made with our own similar experiences.
Health-care providers are finding it increasingly difficult to provide compassion — in the midst of growing patient workloads, paperwork, institutional demands and workplace stress. They run the risk of depleting their compassion “gas tanks” in the process...
"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life." Don’t take my word for it. Try it. Make a list of the things that might give you pause or make you groan or recoil. Express your appreciation for these things in your life. Welcome them like old friends...
Facebook recently announced that it now has over 2 billion monthly users. This makes its “population” larger than that of China, the US, Mexico and Japan combined.
We touch the real heart of compassion when we can engage with someone who is suffering from carrying so much aggression, so much negativity, so much emotion that they can’t help but cause trouble and drive people away. If you can approach such a person and give them some support...
- By M.J. Ryan
It was only when I began to study patience closely that I came to see how anger and patience are related. In fact, anger is the direct consequence of losing our patience. For it is precisely because we don’t have tolerance for something or someone that we get mad...
Most parents view their children’s playing of electronic games as potentially problematic – or even dangerous.
Sometime around 2011 or 2012, it suddenly became very easy to predict what people would be doing in public places: Most would be looking down at their phones.