Social Comparisons - Working for You or Against
We often compare ourselves to others. We are social creatures, and it's natural for us to do this. In a way, we are trying to see where we stand in the pecking order - what is our social status? The manner in which we compare ourselves to others can be t...
Mindfullness Challenges
Honestly, I really am working on not "living in my head" too much. I am improving on this, but I am undoing years of conditioned thought patterns. Eckhart Tolle calls this stream of incessant, unconscious thinking the "ego." It is thinking without conscio...
You Are Not Your Thoughts
As you can tell, I've really gotten into mindfulness as of late. Although I've been practicing mindfulness for about 10 years, a convergence of things have led me to become more focused on it.I can say with utmost confidence that mindfulness i...
A New Spin on Walking the Dogs
Like many others, I need to walk my dogs every day. They look forward to it much more than I do most of the time. Usually when I walk the dogs I'm walking them and thinking what I'm going to be doing when I'm finished.
Practicing Mindfulness Daily
It's a given that when we practice something, we get better at it. Our brains are made to adapt to different stimuli. Mindfulness can be practiced in small ways every day such that you will get better at it. If you really wanted to learn a foreign lang...
Mindfulness - Learning to Be Still
In this age of technology we have virtually countless ways to distract ourselves. We have our radios, CD players, iPods, email, talk radio, TV, DVDs, video games, cell phone, text messaging......
Igniting Emotions
Our emotions are typically elicited by our thoughts. Situations, in a sense, are neither bad nor good...they just are. It is our thoughts about the situations that give rise to corresponding feelings. Often these thoughts are "automatic" and just below ou...
More on "Spinning"
As I said in my last post, it's easy for thoughts that are just in our imagination to create strong, visceral responses. The exact type of physiological and emotional responses depend upon...
Self Liberation
Now, I'm on the same journey as everyone else, so I grow and learn just as you do. Thus, I expect my views to change some over time. Still, I'm very interested in finding some core truths that everyone can use to improve their lives. I'm comfortable sayin...
Self-Liberation Through Actions
Our actions can have a huge affect on our emotional well-being. One of the benefits of focusing on changing our behavior is that it is mostly directly under our control. If you want to raise your arm, it's only a choice away. Although depression can sap o...
Self-Liberation Through Thoughts
So, changing our behavior is one way of improving our sense of well-being. I'm referring to this as a form of self-liberation because we do not have to be shackled to our feelings. We can ...
Self-Liberation Through Mindfulness
Now we've arrived at potentially the most powerful way to break out of a cycle of negative thoughts and feelings. It is through mindfulness, which is really a way of changing our being more than just our doing or thinking. It is the transformatio...
Body Scan Meditation
So, I was doing a body scan meditation the other day by following a CD by Jon Kabat-Zinn, who is a renowned psychologist who has been doing work in mindfulness for many years. I do my own version with clients sometimes and most people find it quite relaxi...
Quick Healthy Eating Tip
I have a sweet tooth, which is often hard to fight. It's natural that we crave sweets - we are hardwired for that. At one time, sweet meant fruits, and fruits are good sources of vitamins, fiber, and energy. However, as our society has developed, we now h...
Life Through a Lens
My eldest son's graduation was this past Friday...from preschool. Not that there was a ton of pomp and circumstance, but there was a ceremony (in case you are wondering, he graduated magna cum...
Max Caffeine Per Day?
I love coffee...and the caffeine that comes with it. But there can be "too much of a good thing." Coffee helped me make it through graduate school. In fact, I didn't start drinking coffee until grad school. That's when I discovered, "Ah, THIS is ...
Reading & Fatigue
Have you ever had the experience of not being able to maintain concentration while reading and/or not remembering what you just read? Of course, this can be from a number of causes (e.g., boring or extremely dense reading material,
Relief from Anger
Our anger can be kept alive indefinitely. An incident in which we felt wronged from 20 years ago can send us spiraling into a heated rage within just seconds of thinking about it. Thus, our anger is just a thought away. We've all experienced this before. ...
Mining Podcasts
I really like iTunes, my iPod, podcasts, and all of the options th...
