Blog | Dr. Amy Johnson

You Don’t Have to Fix the Past in Order to Have a New Future

The future is completely open, and we are writing it moment to moment.” ~Pema ChodronMy family recently drove from Michigan to North Carolina—twenty hours roundtrip. To entertain themselves, my five-year-old daughter Willow taught my three-year-old son Miller to play rock-paper-scissors in the backseat.Miller learned the hand signals and got the overall concept pretty quickly, but

Knowing Where to Look is the Only Thing You Ever Need

Do me a favor. Open both of your hands, palms up. You have an empty left palm facing up, and an empty right palm facing up.Imagine that your left hand represents what you feel and experience. In that hand is feelings of happy, scared, excited or nervous. In that hand is experiences of hunger, sleepiness, pain

Finding A Soft Place to Rest

This article was originally published in July 2016.There’s an inner churning that happens. Or a circling, perhaps. Like a dog circling the rug, looking for a soft place to rest.That circling is what happens when a mind is disturbed. I don’t mean disturbed in any sort of stable or unhealthy way. Disturbed is a temporary experience, not a

Thanksgiving is not Just a Day or an Activity. It’s Who You Are

Gratitude and Giving Thanks can be something you do. They can be a verb, something you generate or look for.But did you know that they are also who and what you are?They are you, underneath the surface stuff thoughts and feelings. They are there for us to feel in any moment.You can be blessed with a

Dysfunctional Family Bingo: A Conversation about Expectations, Compassion, and Family

In honor of US Thanksgiving next week and upcoming holidays worldwide, I’m excited to (re)-share the game of Dysfunctional Family Bingo with you. I first learned about DFB from Martha Beck (who heard about it somewhere herself) almost 10 years ago and I’ve shared it many, many times around the holidays.The reason I keep sharing is that people LOVE

Playing the Game: A Short Story About Willow and Buddha

While I was at the Three Principles Global Community conference last week, and really kind woman stopped me in the lobby. She told me that she loved the story below so much that she was going to include it in her holiday cards this year.Really?! Well, that’s pretty awesome. I told Willow, the star of this

Overcome Any Habit or Addiction, Even the “Big Ones” (A Video Conversation with Micheal Hilton)

I recently had a conversation with my friend Micheal Hilton about ending habits.Micheal knows a thing or two about ending habits via the understanding that I share–he is a former drug and alcohol addict who walked away from all substances several years ago upon learning the No-Willpower Approach and the understanding behind it.Micheal asked to

Are you Stronger than a Marshmallow? (And what that says about breaking your habit)

Back in the early 1970s there was a psychology experiment done at Stanford. It’s been dubbed “the marshmallow experiment”. Here’s the CliffsNotes version.Kids around the age of 4 were brought into a room and sat at a table. In front of them was a single large, fluffy, delicious marshmallow on a plate. The experimenter told the

It Doesn’t Matter How you Feel (A Video Conversation)

I”m excited to share a conversation I recently had with the awesome Lydia Wente that she has dubbed “It Doesn’t Matter How you Feel (& Other Ways to Be Happy)”. I love that “it doesn’t matter how you feel” is one of the things Lydia took from our conversation.Because it doesn’t matter. Not really. And definitely not for

I Hate Being Human

I recently heard someone say “I hate being human.” Can you believe it? At first I couldn’t…but then I totally could. I knew what she meant. We’ve all felt that way. We hear people say it all the time in different words. They say:I don’t want to feel thisHow do I fix this?Why is this happening?Things