Resilience – Basics
Transforming Adversity into Learning and Growth – A Quick Overall Guide
An article of mine – Transforming Adversity into Learning and Growth – was published in December 2019 in Therapy Today by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. It’s an excellent overview of what I teach about resilience. It’s lengthy for a post, but streamlined as a magazine article with basic concepts and many tools […]
When Life Takes a Sharp Left Turn
I know this has happened to you as it has happened to me. You’re going along, having a good enough day, and suddenly life goes wonky in a most unexpected way. Your morning commute is going well; just a few blocks from your office or dropping the kids off at school, then suddenly unbelievable out-of-nowhere […]
The Coddling of the American Mind – How the Younger Generation Is Losing Out on Resilience Skills
Here’s the definition of resilience adopted by the American Psychological Association: Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress. Not only do we need resilience to adapt well to adversity, trauma, etc. We need a certain amount of adversity, with enough internal and […]
Resilience Is a Verb
As we learned in this interview with Dr. Elisha Goldstein, resilience is not a noun, something to achieve, but a verb, something to live. Here’s an exercise from Resilience that can help us live into positive changes in our lives very quickly. Change Every Should to Could We all have unconscious patterns in our […]
Crazy Making Thoughts and Rewiring the Patterns That Create Them
I’ve come to realize I’m a great catastrophizer. I can go from a sneeze means “uh, oh, I’m catching a cold” to I’m going to get sick and have to cancel clients to I’m going to lose clients to I’m going to lose my business…all in less than three seconds flat. Catastrophizing may have a […]
Changing Thoughts from Negative to Positive
Most of us have a Top Ten list of nagging, nay-saying thoughts that can just drive us crazy – and sabotage our confidence, block our resilience. “Better not! They’ll only make fun of you for doing that!” “See? I knew I couldn’t. I shouldn’t have even tried.” “Life sucks. And it’s not going to get […]
Change Every Should to a Could
When we couch an intention or a choice for a new behavior in terms of “should” – I “should” do my taxes this weekend, I “should” check to see how Harry’s doing after his knee surgery – the “should” creates an unconscious expectation or command for performance and sets us up for criticism if we […]
Claiming Your Growing Resilience
As you’ve been setting wise intentions and making responsible choices moving into 2018, it’s still important to discern whether those intentions and choices are coming to fruition, having the desired effect in your efforts to become more resilient. This discernment is important because so much of becoming more resilient involves learning and claiming that we […]
A Wise Way to Set New Year Intentions
My manuscript for Resilience: Powerful Practices for Bouncing Back from Disappointment, Difficulty, and Even Disaster is now in the hands of the publisher. (forthcoming September 2018) I can engage with the challenges, opportunities, and blessings of the new year with, I hope, deeper wisdom and clarity from the lessons and processes of that writing. The Toolkit […]
Difficult Stuff Happens. Shift Happens, Too
(An edited version of the article below will appear in the June 2017 Spirit Rock e-newsletter. May the flow from shit happening to shift happening ring true and prove useful.) Difficult stuff happens. Every human being walking through a human life knows that. We can lose our car keys and wallet two days before a […]