Practices for Recovering Resilience
Resilience from Excellent Positive Psychology Resource
The Renaissance part of my retirement I’m enjoying a lot. One example, a recommendation from the same friend who sent me the “Celebrating your new office furniture!” card (a hammock): Wonderworks: the 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature: a brilliant exploration of the development of “technologies” in literature – serenity elevator, empathy […]
Take All the Time You Need
My Gourmet Poets Society meets this weekend; some of us meeting in person, masked, outdoors in the garden. Some joining by Zoom. In the process of de-cluttering, which seems a requirement when retiring, I came upon this poem I had written years ago while cleaning the house for another gathering of GPS. Taking the time […]
Abiding in Being: Foundational to Resilience
One full month into retirement-Renaissance, now deep into long-postponed de-cluttering [see The Original Map of Resilience], pouring through ten binders of poems collected over 20 years of gatherings of my Gourmet Poets Society, coming upon this ancient wisdom from Lao Tzu (which I did include in my book Bouncing Back) which evokes the deepest wisdom […]
The Original Map of Resilience
Transitioning into retirement means reading many good new books and re-connecting with many good old friends. It also means tackling the de-cluttering postponed for at least five years while I was a bit (gratefully!) over-booked on the circuit and with clients. I started with the low-hanging fruit: piles tucked in one place between the couch […]
Competent, Efficient, Creative, Contributory
Besides letting go of the roles that were the pillars of my professional life – working with clients as a psychotherapist in a 30-year clinical practice, teaching the neuroscience of resilience to mental health professionals and bouncing back from disaster to courageous ordinary folks in venues around the world for more than a decade – […]
Retirement: Dancing with Doing-Living-Being
A colleague sent me a card for my retirement: “Congratulations on your new office furniture!” With an image of a hammock in the back yard. I do have a chaise longue in my back yard, and I do try to spend at least one hour every afternoon reading one of the 17 books I currently […]
Growing Beyond the Loneliness
A client recommended Wired for Love: A Neuroscientist’s Journey through Romance, Loss, and the Essence of Human Connection by Stephanie Cacioppo, published April 2022. I read it the week I was teaching at the Cape Cod Institute, incorporating many of its insights into my teachings that week on The Resilient Mindset. I got intrigued by […]
It Really Was This Beautiful
I formally brought my career/calling as a psychotherapist/trainer to a poignant closure by teaching at the end of June at the Cape Cod Institute. And I formally celebrated the transition into retirement/Renaissance by climbing Lassen Peak (yesterday as I write this) and watching the mid-night moon’s reflections on Summit Lake. This post is a placeholder […]
Finding the Goldilocks Spot
As you read this, I will be celebrating my (almost) 75th birthday by attempting to hike to the top of Mt. Lassen (10,500 feet). When I climbed the peak last summer, I met a 70+ year old gentleman at the top. He said, “You know, if we keep on doing this, we’ll be able to […]
The Land of In-Between
“Nauset” means “a place between.” The indigenous Nauset lived on the salt marshes of Cape Cod for hundreds of years before the Pilgrims “discovered” the Cape and displaced the native Americans who lived there. I taught my last in-person clinical training for the Cape Cod Institute at Nauset Regional High School in Eastham, MA last […]