Blog: Healing Choices
This blog focuses on the small moments that make a good day into a bad day, or a terrible day into a gift of a day. It’s my belief that developing awareness in these small moments is the practice we need to be able to navigate all the ups and downs of life, from loss and grief to love, peace, and joy.
Are You Using Generalized Language to Keep Yourself Stuck?
Last year, a client, I’ll call her May, told me about someone who’d seen all the work she’d put into the report she was sending to her boss. At the time, her colleague had told her, “This is supposed to be a 1 page summary! You don’t need to do all this work every...
Back to the Basics
When we are in crisis mode, and we are all in crisis mode these days, in some way or another, we need to be gentle with ourselves and stick to the basics. 1. Eat as healthily and mindfully as you can. Then, when you don’t eat healthy, tell yourself it’s okay, and...
Anxiety vs. Reality
One morning recently I woke up with a feeling of...I couldn’t quite name it. I felt unsettled, like something was wrong. I started to think of all the different areas of my life, looking for a cause for the feeling. My mom...was at risk. My son...wasn’t learning...
Slow It Down
The speed of life seems to get faster and faster, so I have found it more important to try to slow it down. The only way I know how to do that is by staying present as much as possible. When I say, “as much as possible,” I don’t mean that I spend 90% of my time truly...
Blame Doesn’t Serve Us
A number of years ago, a friend and I were traveling to and from New York City together. While we were at Grand Central Station, grabbing a bite to eat before our train left, someone stole my friend’s purse. She’d left it underneath her seat. My friend was very upset,...
How Are You Different?
It’s easy to feel that the days are a grind and nothing really changes. But here we are at the end of the year—and the end of a decade. If you take a look back, you can see that you’ve changed. Maybe your life isn’t that different from what it was a year ago, but my...
Self-Pity is Not Self-Compassion
I recently spoke to a group about self-compassion. I’ve spoken on this topic before, but this time I talked about the two sides of self-compassion, based on the most recent work of Dr. Kristin Neff, a researcher who has been studying compassion for years. One of the...
Mistakes are Made…and that’s Okay
I grew up believing I should never make a mistake. That there was something wrong with me when I did make a mistake, as of course I did, all the time! The result of my belief was that I felt terrible every time I made a mistake. Which means, I felt terrible all the...
Creators Beat Victims Any Day
Lately I’ve been talking a lot about the Karpman Drama Triangle. Dr. Steven Karpman, a psychologist, developed the concept as a way of describing a dysfunctional way of dealing with conflict. It’s also been called the “victim consciousness” in other books. Recognizing...
A Noise is Just a Noise
Pema Chodron tells a story about how annoyed she (or someone in her meditation session) was listening to someone’s whistling breath during a meditation session. Eventually, she realized the sound was coming from the radiator and she was amazed to notice that all her...