Category: Happiness and other emotion

How to Bring Up Children who Aren’t Afraid of Emotion

It seems that every time I hear useful advice about how to influence children, it always comes back to the same thing: Whatever it is you want your kids to do, do it yourself. (This applies to relationships with anyone, by the way. Give what you want to get. Be the change you want to

Why Life gets Easier When you Steer Clear of Self-Help

I used to read a lot of very traditional self-help. It wasn’t always the case—but it also wasn’t rare—that I’d close the book feeling a little worse than when I started. Searching for answers outside of yourself can be a desperate cycle of getting your hopes up, being let down, and blaming yourself.Self-help sometimes hurts

One More Time… What’s my Default?

I was emailing with a sweet, sweet client a few weeks ago about how her true nature is peace of mind and total well-being. She hadn’t been in touch with that true nature as of late—she felt far from her inherent well-being and instead experienced a blanket of heavy thought. We talked about how her

So What if You Don’t Know?

“Sometimes questions are more important than answers” –Nancy WillardIt always amazes me how much meaning people attach to the innocent little state of uncertainty. Actually, “I don’t know” is an innately neutral statement of fact pertaining to a single moment in time.There is never anything inherently bad, scary, or ‘wrong’ with “I don’t know” and

Healthy Suspicion

“Thought creates the world and then says, ‘I didn’t do it’” –David Bohm Your experience of the world is created by your thinking. Everything you see “out there” is not preexisting “out there” as you’ll experience it, just waiting for your gaze to meet it. You’re projecting it “out there” as it occurs within you.Because

How to Avoid the Ups and Downs of Life

Stuff happens in life. You’ve probably noticed. Stuff happens to you without your approval and beyond your control. That’s the way of it.Yet, most of the people I talk with want the ups and downs to stop. They are searching for a way to keep life in the “up” territory to avoid the “downs”.It happens

Why Bad Moods Aren’t as Bad as You Think

“Most of the shadows in life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson How many times have you heard “Follow your heart” or “Let emotion be your guide”?Too many to count, I’d bet.It’s generally good advice—it’s certainly wiser to follow your own feelings than to blindly do what other people think

The Thin Line Between Focusing on Yourself And Depression

I remember hearing about some research once that linked self-focus—thinking about yourself a lot and making things that happen out in the world about you in some way—with depression. The more you think about yourself, the more depressed you are.There are obviously a lot of missing variables here. This doesn’t mean that focusing on yourself

Enlightenment Lessons #4

Here’s the fourth video in the Enlightenment Lessons series. If you missed the first two videos, you can find them here.

Want to get Lucky? Here’s how.

Things happen to us that we can’t control. All the time.But we do have some control over what we bring to the table: how we prepare, our qualities, our attitude. And we do have some control over how we respond to those chance things that happen to us.It’s like the old joke about the guy