Dr. Amy Johnson Blog’s

Today I’m going to share a bit about my experience in silence. If you missed my first message about why anyone would choose to go on a silent retreat, you can read that here. And if you missed my second message about meditation on retreat and what that’s all about, read that one here. Before I share some

I’m back to speak to another common question about silent retreats – whether you need meditation experience. The real question might be: Is “meditation” what a silent retreat is all about? (If you missed the last message about why anyone would choose to sit in silence for a week, you can check that one out here.) The

I am so excited to announce my upcoming Silent Retreat, February 23 – 28, 2025, in beautiful Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Over the next several weeks I’ll speak to a number of questions I’ve heard from people who are intrigued by the idea of a silent retreat, but who are unsure why one would commit to a whole

Today’s article is written by Change Coach Suzie Yeulett You’ll often see or hear people talking about the benefit of having a quiet mind. I talk about this too, but recently I’ve been trying to get more clarity around it and specifically what it actually means! It’s pretty impossible to maintain a quiet mind for very long

Today’s article is written by Change Coach Lindsey Elliott There is a lot of emphasis on self-care today, especially for women. And this a good thing on so many levels. However like most concepts in modern life, even this can feel over complicated, or like a pressure. It can become an extra thing to do or

Today’s article is written by Change Coach Missy Maiorano Today, I received a voice memo from a long-time client of mine. She began her message by describing a familiar experience of sadness and regret around eating too much food, followed by an even-more familiar experience of deep shame and guilt. But, something new happened today that

Today’s article is written by Change Coach Suzie Yeulett Life is a constantly moving stream of experience. There will be inevitable ups and downs for us all during that experience. However, it’s possible to weather life’s storms in a more pleasant way than most people are aware of. It’s a Superpower and I’m sharing it here. I

Today’s article is written by Change Coach Alex Linares Imagine you are driving to a new city using your GPS and at first it seems to navigate you out of your home city accurately so you are closely paying attention to every direction and prompt it provides. But as you get farther from the city it

Today’s article is written by Change Coach Lindsey Elliott I want you to imagine, if you will, a light bulb covered in hundreds of sticky notes. Written on the notes is a variety of words such as: “Kind”“Lazy”“Woman”“Too fat”“Stressed”“Anxious”“Generous”“Hardworking”“Intelligent”“Unfit”“Thinks of others”“Successful”“A failure”“Untidy”“Useless” The light that shines from the light bulb is covered over by all the sticky labels,

Today’s article is written by Change Coach Karli Naglick Lately, I have been curious about all of the things that I think I “know.” We all move through the day based on what we think we “know.” For example, we know when we need to wake up, we know what we have to get done, we

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Suzie Yeulett Mental health and feelings of well-being are actually our natural state, but they get covered up through life and our conditioning, like scratches on glass distort an otherwise clear view. As newborns, we react and respond to life naturally without thought or limitation. As we grow up, we

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Lindsey Elliott We all feel overwhelmed from time to time. It’s a normal human experience. But if we feel overwhelmed much of the time this can become debilitating for our mental and physical health. Life in our society seems rather conducive to being overloaded with all we ‘have’ to

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Lindsey Elliott I recently had my 50th birthday, where this photo was taken. A half century of life lived. It’s got me somewhat reflective and contemplative. Not in a kind of “I’m going to live in a cave and meditate on the meaning of life” way. But more in a

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Suzie Yeulett Over the Christmas holiday period, my husband was incredibly busy with end of year work, commuting into London early and getting home late. My teen boys wanted to stay up late, because they were on a break from school and wanted to maximise the opportunity to chill out. Several

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Missy Maiorano Dear Body, Right now, as I type this, there are five distinct, beautiful blue bruises on your left leg from where a vein procedure was performed last week. In addition, there is a rather large pinkish-red prickly rash where the medical tape was left on a little too

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Lindsey Elliott The Cambridge dictionary definition of procrastination is: ‘the act of delaying something that must be done, often because it is unpleasant or boring’. I would also add to that, ‘something we believe is hard or we won’t be able to achieve or complete’. Almost all of us will have

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Karli Naglick I have recently enjoyed exploring the channels of some uniquely creative YouTubers. I particularly love one channel that features three Siberian Huskies named Tikanni, Kita, and Tehya. These dogs have the most amazing “husky howls.” Kita is described as having the “classic awoo,” Tehya sounds like the

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Missy Maiorano Many years ago, our family had to say good-bye to our sweet German shepherd, Bailey. She was the kindest, most loving dog we could have asked for. We only had her for 8 short years, but in that time, she became a true Maiorano—”one of the girls”—along

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Kristina Bruce I remember being at the end of Byron Katie’s 9-day School for The Work, and she was delivering parting words to us attendees. She held her hands up, palms facing each other at a distance apart, and then drew them closer to each other, then back out again.

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Lindsey Elliott I am sure you are like me, and have areas of your life that seem to flow easily. Yet there are others where you struggle to make changes. For some of us we might have an easy time with success at work and yet can’t seem to

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Missy Maiorano Back in 2018, when I was struggling with anxiety and depression, I was drawn to reading biographies about people who had gone through unimaginable suffering only to emerge on the other side stronger and more peaceful and resilient than ever. In most of the stories, the people

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Anton McCarthy Some time ago, the sky was blue, and the waves were gentle. But I felt a creeping uneasiness. It was gradual at first, but my suspicion was it would build. I had become familiar with how a persistent collection of thoughts seemed to do that — hang around. How could I feel

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Suzie Yeulett I’m suggesting a trust experiment to play with. It’s a simple idea, based on how I see the World and our role in it (or life itself, in other words.) Are you serious? Throughout the day, our conditioned (survival) mind will jump in with ‘what ifs’ to help prepare

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Kristina Bruce I’ve noticed a theme amongst the clients I work with who are recovering from life-long dieting and weight loss attempts: they want to be “better”. I deeply resonate with this drive, and I’m sure you can too. If not in the area of wanting to change your body,

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Kristina Bruce I woke up really tired today. My almost 2-year old daughter is home with me for a couple weeks before pre-school starts, and as you can imagine, it’s a tad tiring. (Though we are looking cute in the picture below). See, I’m someone who needs her sleep! When I don’t

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Kelly O’Connell “It’s ruined. I’m a failure.” I woke up in the middle the night and realized I hadn’t done a class on my Peloton app the day before. You see, I made a commitment to myself starting January 1 to complete 365 days of Peloton classes IN A

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Missy Maiorano “This too shall pass” was once my lifeline. During moments of intense sadness, fear, and hopelessness, the simple phrase, “this too shall pass” seemed to get me from one breath to the next. My mind assured me that if I could just hold on, the uncomfortable feelings would

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Suzie Yeulett I find myself just noticing life unfolding more and more. Something has shifted so that I see myself as the ‘noticer’, or the perceiver of life, rather than the ‘doer’ more often. I first felt this shift when my Mum was at her end of life. It was as

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Lindsey Elliott My son and I went for a walk recently, and he asked if he could to listen to some music wearing the new headphones his Dad had given him. Whilst I wanted to say no…it felt far too much like he is a teenager and not 7

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Lindsey Elliott A few days ago I had an insight about makeup. It was quite an innocent, small thought but it led me to see again that what I think isn’t necessarily true. I was thinking about a friend of mine who I know to be confident, grounded, strong, independent

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Becky Anderson As I have been building my coaching business and what feels like “putting myself out there”, so many insecurities have come up for me that do not seem to fit the situation. And what I realized recently is that of course they have. My brain has had

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Dave Fry The words may not do this story justice because it felt like swimming under giant waves in the ocean. You know when you watch the surfers fall off their boards into those rolling waves and wonder why they’re not shredded into pieces from the crushing force? Supposedly,

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Suzie Yeulett Water does not resist, it flows A river adapts to whatever surroundings it comes up against and continues to flow – it will find a way to go where it wants to go. Since life, like a river, is constantly moving and changing without our direction, there’s less for

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Missy Maiorano In 2018, when I was in the throes of battling chronic hives and lip swelling, all I wanted was to have my old life back. I wanted the “happy, carefree Missy who wore cute sundresses and a bright smile.” I wanted the feelings of hopelessness and fear

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Sarah Edwards I used to have a full-blown relationship with my Apple Watch. I would gaze at it several times a minute to check how my day was going…emails, texts, step count, calories burned, my bank balance, my diary…signs of atrial fibrillation. Technology for a busy person perpetually in forward

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Suzie Yeulett We have very little control over what happens in life. I saw this when I lost my Mum. Rather than this thought scaring me, it felt like freedom. There’s less for us ‘to do’, or to manage. That doesn’t mean we do nothing, it means we can just do

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Kristina Bruce The other day I posted a video to YouTube titled “You DON’T Need to WORRY About What You Eat. Here’s Why”. It garnered a comment from someone who seemed quite upset that I was telling people not to care about what they eat (and subsequently not care about

The word ‘relax’ has taken on many meanings for me throughout the years. As a kid with energy to burn, I heard “relax”. Stop being so full of life. The adults wanted peace and quiet. Then, relax felt unnatural. As an anxious 20-something, I heard conflicting advice. “Work hard, make something of yourself, what you do now matters”.

For me, “waking up” has been a little like defrosting a freezer with a hair dryer. I’ve personally never defrosted a freezer with a hair dryer, but I’ve watched my husband do it. Heat is applied and at first, nothing appears to happen. Little by little, an inch of ice at a time becomes watery and shinier

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Lindsey Elliott I heard a statistic the other day that 95% of the thoughts we had yesterday, we will have today!! I’m not sure how this has been measured but it certainly feels true to me. No wonder that we all struggle with habits, addictions, low self-esteem, lack of confidence,

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Suzie Yeulett Your whole life is lived in the present moment. Your memories are just thoughts, carried through time into the present. The future never arrives; it’s made up of thoughts of what might happen next. You don’t need to re-suffer what has happened in the past by using your memory this

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Wendy Healy Sometimes I get a glimpse of the “Observer,” where two worlds connect and I get a real sense that there is something else running this thing called Life… Today the Observer is fully enjoying watching me teach Aqua class. I can feel her there, floating somewhere over my

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Alex Linares Today I managed to make it to hot yoga despite all my mind’s protest regarding all the other things I should do. The last few weeks at work have been testing my ability to remember this understanding, the universe asking like a toddler: how grounded are you when

In a recent LSBC call, a woman was talking about how her mind is always trying to be in control. Constantly scrambling to know everything, so that it can protect and prevent. That is its job, after all. I guess what it really comes down to, she concluded after a moment of reflection, is a deep, human

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Lindsey Elliott You know the kind of thinking I am talking about….it whirls around, and around in your head, and demands that you do something about this situation/behavior/person NOW! You feel compelled, uncomfortable, angry, resentful, anxious… and it all looks so urgent, demanding action now. It can be very hard

Change doesn’t happen by trying to change. Trying to change is actually the opposite of what’s helpful. Trying to change thoughts, feelings, behaviors, level of consciousness, or anything else is a rejection of what is. It’s telling life that it got it wrong; that what’s arising should not be. It’s telling life that we’re not okay with

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Missy Maiorano God comes to you disguised as your life. —Father Richard Rohr Recently, I was asked to think of a childhood memory from my first decade of life. I was instructed not to overthink it…just to say the first thing that came to mind. And, without any difficulty, an image

You can lose interest in thought. It’s really not all that difficult. You sit back in and as the formless–in and as the seat of awareness–rather than hooking into temporary forms of thought and feeling. You zoom out to notice that you’re aware of what’s rising and falling rather than zooming in on what’s rising and falling. You’re

I’ve gotten a lot of questions about the difference between welcoming what arises and wallowing in what arises. This welcoming stuff is not a perfect science. Please keep in mind that my words I share around it are not what-to-do, but are pointing you in a general direction. A most important feature of welcoming is curiosity. Curious means

My sister and I used to play with a plastic beach ball in our pool. Between the ball falling into the bristly bushes around the pool and our cat batting it around, it had some tiny holes. Air was leaking, but it was slow. There was plenty of air left for the ball to float, and even

I recently read The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life by Boyd Varty. Trackers find a first track that piques their interest and follow it until they can’t anymore. Sometimes they lose the track, or the track simply stops. When that happens, they find another first track and follow that one until they can’t anymore. They don’t know where

As I talk about leaning into what’s arising with so many people lately, a funny thing keeps showing up. They lean into what’s arising and realize that something their mind labels boredom is at the center. They see that their minds are flailing about, keeping habits alive, and working in overdrive to prevent them from feeling bored. Wait,

When I was struggling with anxiety, my world was tiny. I went to class, but only when there was an open seat right by the door. I can’t tell you how many times I walked by the classroom, saw that the only open seats were way across the room, and kept walking.  I went to the grocery

When I talk about leaning into everything that arises with curiosity, it’s a little like watching a dramatic movie scene with no musical soundtrack telling you how you’re supposed to feel.  The dramatic soundtrack may be playing, but your curiosity allows you to see that as a lens rather than as reality.  When you’re exploring what’s arising

There is an incredibly clear way life shows you that you’re seeing things through a thick and biased filter of thought. It shows you through discomfort. When you’re feeling things like resistance, self-consciousness, guilt, regret, shame, or anxiety, you’re identified with experience as if it’s “yours”; as if you’re a separate “me” to whom life is happening. Rumi

There’s a worm addicted to eatinggrape leaves.Suddenly, he wakes up,call it grace, whatever, somethingwakes him, and he’s no longera worm.He’s the entire vineyard,and the orchard too,the fruit, the trunks,a growing wisdom and joythat doesn’t needto devour.–This is How a Human Being Can Change by Rumi The worm doesn’t break his grape leaf addiction by cutting out

Everything you experience and everything you see in the world around you is filtered through the often invisible, yet incredibly powerful lens of me-and-my-life. For starters, it looks like there is a you, separate from life, having a life. It looks like there is a you, separate from life, to whom good, bad, wanted and unwanted

A habit or ongoing problem, by definition, requires memory. It requires a brain that pulls ideas, concepts, and memories through time and draws sweeping conclusions about them. A brain that says, “This thing happened in the past, so I assume it’ll happen again in the future.” Without a past and future conversation, there’s just Now. Anything that’s

It can look like we’re responsible for making things happen. Life looks like our responsibility. Our outcomes, including our own peace of mind, happiness, and anything we want to change, appear to be up to us to figure out. But what if change is not up to us? What if human minds love to take credit for things,

Suffering is feedback, showing us that we’re attached to ideas and thoughts that appear true, but aren’t. For example, when you believe you’re not good enough or life should be other than how it is, you suffer. That suffering is alerting you to your identification with a fleeting, false idea. Like suffering, habits and anxiety are

We’ve been led to believe that our thoughts and feelings are ours to manage and control. At the very least, most people believe there are things we can do to help our mind relax or to help ourselves feel better. But what if thoughts and feelings change completely on their own, all the time? You couldn’t stop

Continue to see thought for what it is. It’s the always-on narrator in your mind that is very opinionated and full of problems and solutions. But that narrator is not you and the narration is not the truth.  There is a healthy, happy, free space beyond the narration. There is an awareness or space within which

Deep, lasting change happens when we see things in a brand new way.  As I wrote in The Little Book of Big Change, the kind of deep, lasting change we all want isn’t dependent on willpower, daily practices, or hard work.  It happens by insight. Insight, “a sight from within”, is simply a brand new way of

“Feelings don’t want to be healed; they want to be held.” —Jeff Foster “Be curious, not judgmental.” —Ted Lasso Last Thursday, a strong, somewhat nondescript feeling of “ick” pervaded my body. The feeling arose after receiving a comment that wasn’t overtly offensive, but was nonetheless taken as a “hit” to this well-formed ego of mine. The “ick” was

When you combine the spiritual truth that you are perfectly and completely mentally healthy and habit-free (but for your temporary, habitual thinking) with the scientific finding that your habit is made up of thoughts that fade on their own, your habit begins to look far less powerful and stable than it has.When you consider the

Last week I told you about the woman who said she was LOST while in the middle of a lot of big energy. You can read Part One here. “I’m lost” tells the story that she should feel some way other than she does. Something else should be happening. These feelings are wrong and unwelcome. What comes

I was emailing with a woman who said she feels lost.  She even capitalized it. Depression and darkness and fear are present, unwanted circumstances are happening, a handful of painful thoughts are constantly repeating, and I feel LOST, she said. I was curious about how, in the middle of plenty of other stuff, “lost” was the part

There is a part of you that is totally and completely habit-free. When you are in the deeper emotions of peace, love, and gratitude, you are connected with your true self, and your habit is a non-issue. It is nonexistent.  When you are caught up in the human weather of your life—thinking about life rather than

In May, I recorded a podcast episode called How Planning and Playing out Scenarios Distract from Feeling.I was sharing my hunch that most of the thinking we do–especially in the form of worrying, planning and playing out future scenarios–was learned to help us avoid feeling emotion. We learn this early. We escape into thought. It feels

You are well, periodEveryone on Earth. Essentially. Always.There are no exceptions, caveats, conditions, or rules to remember and there is absolutely nothing you have to do—nothing you even can do—to make it more or less true.Are you skeptical? If you are noticing that in this very moment you are most certainly not in touch with

I hear people say they feel blocked. Stuck. Frozen in resistance. They want to act, but they can’t. A man in our LSBC graduate community wants to create his art, but every time he sits down to do it he feels a barrier of resistance. A woman in the new cohort of The Little School of Big Change

A mind is habitually, universally dissatisfied. It’s dissatisfaction is about it, not about you. Part of its gig is to have nonstop conversations about more, better, could be, might be… A mind’s fundamental dissatisfaction is usually followed by ideas or strategies for how to be satisfied someday. Someday is the mind’s favorite promise. It complains about what’s

The old paradigm in mental health is zoomed in.It focuses on our separateness as individuals. It often looks at our mind’s stories in an analytical way, analyzing what we think and feel rather than seeing that we think and feel.It offers a slew of techniques and strategies designed to fix, change, and manipulate how we feel. It

“You aren’t your thoughts” can be heard as permission to reject, bypass, or judge the thoughts, feelings, and inclinations that arise.“That’s lowly, fleeting psychology”, our mind wants to say in a judgmental way. “I’m not that”.And in a sense, you’re not that. But in another sense, you are.Talking only about how you aren’t your thoughts

Problems come from resistance. There will be feelings of anxiety, uneasiness, depression, fear, insecurity, shame. There may be many of them. This is the human experience. These feelings can’t be a problem, they can’t cause problems, and they can’t even resemble problems when they are welcomed. Welcoming is the opposite of resistance and all problems come from resistance.One

On a recent LSBC call, a woman realized she hadn’t bought clothes for her new job because she felt she hadn’t earned them. She hadn’t lost weight, so she didn’t deserve the new clothes. The realization hit her first, then spread throughout the 40 or so women on the call. It was met with a flurry of

We aren’t looking at what all minds do for the sake of hanging out in thought and feeling—we’re looking at what all minds do so we understand it. And we’re trying to understand it so we can see beyond it. When we aren’t caught up in our experience, there’s space to feel what else is

When in doubt, feel.Feeling what’s arising is the ironic way to suffer less. Yes, leaning into discomfort makes it not feel so much like discomfort. The resistance is gone. The hiding and fear are gone. Leaning into safe, perfect energy is all there is.When you feel, what wants to happen is happening. It’s a relief,

This may sound like some overshared zen saying.But seriously.Things can never, and will never, be different from how they are. Not now, not in the past, and not even in the future.Life will only and always be exactly as it is. No different, no better, no worse. It’s a literal fantasy land to think that

I know someone who experiences some low energy, depression-type feelings fairly often and has for a long time.His experience of this has changed for the better over time. He resists it less than he used to. He believes his mind’s stories and judgments about “him and his depression” far less than he used to. He

Birds don’t know how to build nests. They just build nests. Nests are built as this thing we label ‘bird’ instinctually does some stuff.When it’s migration time, they don’t know how or when or where to fly. Wings are flapped and flying happens. Birds’ knowledge, their decisions, their ability, or their clarity have nothing to

Everything about our psychological experience is temporary, in motion, and relatively superficial. We feel impacted by it, no question. But the impact we feel is the moving, changing energy taking form as thoughts and feelings. It’s our psychology, our human weather. Those weather patterns move through us, we feel them, and then they’re promptly replaced

What if there is no actual reason for anything? I mean, there is and there isn’t. In the linear, cause and effect, mentally created story of life, there are oodles of reasons. Everything has a reason in that world. In a way, that world is completely made up of reasons, causes, explanations, and if-this-then-that’s. In that world, you’re

I was talking with someone the other day who was telling me that she has some decisions to make about her kids’ school. I asked what she needs to decide. She didn’t answer my question. Instead, she explained that every time she pulls through the drop-off line, her mind starts spinning. Are we in the right

It’s fine if you’re not okay with what you’re experiencing. Really. Being okay with what’s arising is not a requirement. It’s not the ticket to freedom or the key to satisfaction or anything that dramatic. Experience doesn’t care how okay with it you are. Experience is just experience; it is thought, rising and falling. No biggie. And “okay with”

Rather than being drawn outward, toward thoughts, sensations, stories, and the world “out there”, stay as the awareness of it all.Rest as the screen rather than getting lost in the movie.Rest as the light that illuminates what’s constantly moving and changing, rather than identifying with the moving and changing things being illuminated.Rest in your heart

I’m the oldest child in my family and the oldest of my 9 cousins, so I never wore hand-me-down clothes. I’ve definitely worn some hand-me-down thoughts, though. I carried around hand-me-down opinions and preferences for decades. I’ve adopted boatloads of hand-me-down worries, and lots of hand-me-down identities.Many of them felt familiar, like they fit. Like they had been

“Establish a drishti, a gazeless gaze toward something in the room that’s not moving,” the teacher tells the class. My eyes settle on a grain of white wood molding where the floor and wall meet, about seven feet in front of me. The instant my gaze settles into that spot, my body is steadier. When we have

Life is already living you, making your decisions, steering you along the way. It always has been.Life doesn’t care if you see that it works this way or not. It’s still living you. There is nothing you must see or know in order for this to be the case.I’m not talking about things being predestined;

I’m not a quiet person. I’m not a guarded person or a person who loves control. I’m not a high achiever or a modest achiever or any kind of achiever. Thought that was consistent with some of those qualities moved through me in the past, and I identified with it and acted accordingly. But that no longer looks

We think we’re supposed to have a thing.Maybe your thing is being funny. Or that you have been through a lot and you come out stronger, or that you’re really good at your work.Young people are notorious for looking for their thing, as their mind scrambles to settle into some identity that will presumably keep

“Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.”–Joseph CampbellPractically everyone I know feels like something is a little bit off.Like they’re out of the loop, didn’t

You don’t have a life.That’s just the way your brain presents things in apparent time and space. Calories are burned making it appear as if you are an independent you, over here, separate and distinct from something called life.That supposedly separate and distinct you doesn’t own a life, as if it’s some sort of possession.You

When we sense who-we-are beyond thought, we feel our way into a completely empty moment, pregnant with the possibility of anything but full of nothing.The left-brain-created identity “you” isn’t there. Your identity is created and recreated in each and every moment. There is no slightly better or slightly worse version of “you” camped out, waiting

Life is seen as it’s seen, not as it is.What is seen is filtered through thought. It can’t not be. How could life ever be viewed “as it is”, unfiltered? What even is “as it is”? How would we know?What we do know is that, despite the way our language can converge to agree that

One of the LSBC students in the 6-week course saw something very clearly in our first week in class.She said, “Even though we didn’t really talk about this, for some reason it clicked with me that all of my behaviors are rooted around various fears.”She went on to list half a dozen imagined future events

As Linda woke up to the fact that her mind was trying to help her, but that its conclusions were not accurate or helpful, she was less fooled by it. She saw the wisdom in her habit.She realized that she didn’t have a hard time kicking the wine habit because she was weak or seriously

The only thing ever going on when there is any bit of discomfort or discontent is this: a thought believed.Thought arises and is viewed as all-there-is.There is never anything else going on. Thought arises and is viewed as truth. That’s it.It is that simple, but here’s why it won’t feel so simple: it will most

This supposed thing we call a mind isn’t real.That may be obvious.Mind isn’t a thing. It’s just another thought-label used to lump more thought together to give it an apparent source.Like, “This is what my mind says” or “That’s just what minds do”. That sort of thing.Mind may be a helpful shortcut as far as

Minds think their survival, which is really the body’s survival, depends on them knowing all they can about you and your weaknesses so they can save you from future failure. One of their favorite tools for knowing the future is comparison.Comparison is how the mind secures its position as “safe” and “enough.” To a mind,

I had a falling dream the other night.My son and I were crawling across a steel beam that was about two feet wide and 1000 feet off the ground. We were doing it together, inch by inch, very slowly and very carefully. Our deaths were highly probable and we knew it. As we inched across the

I recently spoke to an amazing group of Rewilding Guides in Angus & Rohini Ross’ Rewilding Training Program. The question that kicked off our discussion was: “Is awareness enough?”What’s not enough to realize freedom, is awareness of some pattern or experience that still looks like “me” or “mine”. This often happens in therapy and sometimes

Since you were about eighteen months old, thought has been masquerading as you.It began labeling and naming things and people, including a very special label called “me”. Anything felt to be arising around “your” particular bodymind became you and yours, me and mine. Sensations felt in the body were called “my feelings”. Thoughts in awareness

The worries and concerns that flash in awareness–and they truly are just a flashing reflection of images, sounds, and sensations–are unique. Sometimes they talk about your health or the health of loved ones. Sometimes about money. Often about something being missing, you not measuring up or needing something you appear to not have. Around this time of

In the name of protection and survival, minds look for unsettled business they can resolve on your behalf. When you’re lying in bed, unable to sleep, your mind could create any number of happy memories, but it focuses on problems it can solve, as Matthew’s mind was doing. It replays misunderstandings and has conversations with

A woman in the LSBC graduate community recently shared an insight she had from the movie Divergent.The characters in the movie are put into simulations where they face their worst fears and need to escape. The protagonist, who is “divergent,” is aware that the situations aren’t real. Everyone else is completely bought into the fearful

On one level, it definitely appears as if we’re responsible for saying and doing the right things, we have some degree of free will, and we make choices throughout life that matter.And on another level, you have to wonder: How do we do all that?If we have free will over our actions, why do we

We have a lot of discussions in The Little School of Big Change about how change happens. Not how our mind generalizes and narrates change, and not a comparison of how things used to be versus how they are now. But about how change actually happens.This feels like a question I should be able to answer

Here’s something crazy to think about.Every single thing you know about your identity, and every single thing you know about your life, is rooted in the past.Who are you? You can only answer that question–using words and descriptions, anyway–by referring to the past.You’re a sister or brother or so-and-so’s child? How could you know that

Several years ago, I was preparing to lead a live workshop, and I went to the venue to check on some logistics. I experienced panic attacks for a long time, but at this particular point, I hadn’t felt anything I would consider anxiety or panic for at least six or seven years.At the venue, I

Before last week, Miller’s last haircut was in February 2020.He loved his long hair. He loved the way it flowed behind him when he ran. He loved that people called him Malibu Miller and told him he looked like a surfer or a European footballer. He loved that many of his friends wanted to grow

Somewhere around the thirteenth century in Bangkok, Thailand, a massive statue of the Buddha was made of pure gold.Not long after the statue was created, Burmese soldiers invaded Thailand. In a flash of insight, the Thai people covered the Golden Buddha in stucco and glass to hide its value and keep it safe from the

Lucy asked, “Doesn’t the fact that my mind is always creating this identity, doling out these warnings and fears, mean there must be something to them? Why else would my mind go there so often?”“What if it’s just the opposite?” I asked back. “If fear and insecurity are innately, deeply who-you-are, why would your mind

Shhh…Be quiet. Find a right-now moment. Now. This one.What’s happening right now? What’s happening before thought?Before the narrator jumps up and starts narrating this right-now moment, what’s actually happening?Anything?Nothing?That’s what I find too. Before thought, in right-now, nothing is happening.The narrator in your head is the source of “things happening”. It tells a story about

This is Bean.And this is how Bean likes to relax, in a full on sprawl, often (though not in this picture), draped over the air conditioning vent.One thing I always notice about my dogs is how deeply and completely they relax. They seem to have no problem falling limp, not an ounce of tension in

I’m unbelievably grateful that I am no longer caught up in the binge eating habit that felt so powerful for eight years.I’m grateful that I no longer have panic attacks, near-constant worry, and so many irrational fears and insecurities.But when someone asked me recently if I was proud of myself for leaving these behind, the

I have a framed picture of Planet Earth, taken from outer space, hanging on my office wall. I love looking at that picture, especially when my mind is caught up in something that feels personal and up to me to figure out. From up in our spaceship, “me” and “my problems” disappear. Concepts like good and

In the early days of graduate school, I had a major case of Impostor Syndrome. Nearly everyone I was with had it too. I know because we talked about it openly.  We all walked into this new, intimidating situation, sizing each other up. What’s special about you? How did you earn your spot here? Is it

 Of all the questions people send to Ask Amy, a good number of them are loosely around what I call “morning dread”.People saying they wake up with a feeling of dread that dissipates throughout the day, but is immediate and strong in the morning and they want to know why.They want a reason. They want

I listen to a lot of recorded coaching sessions during the Change Coach Training. The coaches send me their sessions so that I can provide feedback.I often listen to their clients say things like, “I’ve listened to so many podcasts, why do I still feel bad?” Or, “I’ve been around this understanding for X months/years,

We just visited my mother-in-law who has dementia.Her long-term memory is enough that she recognizes us. But she has very little short-term memory, which means she repeats the same few things over and over.She’ll talk about how big the kids are and ask them what they’ve been up to this summer.Then her mind will move

Within a few days of my last cigarette 18 years ago, I felt horribly sick. Thick, disgusting stuff was being coughed out of my lungs, my sinuses were draining, and I was so mentally foggy I was hesitant to drive my car. I remember thinking how unfair this was. This was my reward for trying to

My friend Phil Hughes wrote another book of metaphors. His first book was great. I like this one even more. It’s called “You Are Not Who You Think You Are!”One of my favorite chapters is called What Remains When the Last Layer Falls Away? “Discovering who you are is like peeling an onion.Layer after layer disappears

Have you noticed that the more specific you get, the more universal things look?The more you talk with someone, going deep into the details of their life, their stories, worries, concerns, wishes and hopes……the more you see that they are just like you? The specifics may vary quite a bit, but in diving into those

We had a nest of 6 baby bunnies in the bush outside our front door. I can’t even begin to express in words how adorable they were. Checking on these baby bunnies (from a safe distance, of course), discussing where their mother was, making bets on their birthday, provided hours of entertainment.We knew their time

All human suffering is due to some very simple misunderstandings.All habits and addictions, worries, and feelings of stuckness stem from some very simple misunderstandings about life.They come from misunderstandings about who we really are and how our human experience works.With these misunderstandings cleared up, life makes more sense. This is true anywhere in life– when

I knew someone with a very sensitive stomach. The tiniest bit of worry and she’d instantly feel sick.She cursed her stomach. She saw it as a weakness.She wanted her stomach fixed. Her mind was full of ways I might help her toughen up her wimpy tummy. Could we train it to not react to her

It’s our natural set point. The home to which the momentum of life naturally bounces us back.⁠⁠But more than “within us”, home base is us. It’s everything. It’s the only thing there is.buy strattera online https://www.mabvi.org/wp-content/themes/mabvi/images/new/strattera.html no prescription ⁠⁠There’s often some confusion about this. Sometimes it looks like home base is a feeling.buy viagra super

We are one being.We look separate. We seem different. It appears as if there are solid boundaries that make you you, me me, and that that.But beyond those more-illusory-than-real boundaries, our sameness is massive, deep, and essential. Our differences are superficial and fleeting.Our habits are also all the same but for the surface-level ways they

I used to think that suffering was showing me I had it wrong.I thought that if I felt badly around my partner, my feelings were showing me that I was in the wrong relationship.If I woke up feeling badly, I wracked my brain for a cause. Is someone upset with me? Is there a missed

Fifteen years ago, I rang in 2006 with a group of friends in Chicago. We had tickets to an event that included a four course meal followed by a night of drinking and club-hopping.  Early in the second course of our dinner, I started to feel sick. I managed to finish most of my meal

Or chop vegetables, carry water. Same thing.The full zen koan is “Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.”What does that mean?I don’t know. But what I hear in it is how simple, practical, and “everyday” insights can be…which is exactly the opposite of how our mind tells us they will

It’s your capacity to feel uncomfortable and know who you are. Watch that feeling rise and fall without tossing a bunch of words and concepts and mental ideas at it.If you eat, it’s your capacity to feel energy that your mind calls discomfort and know who you are beyond and bigger than it. Watch the

Scary thoughts are not much different than nightmares.When you wake up after a horrible nightmare and realize it was a dream, the emotion begins to fade pretty quickly.There might be some lingering adrenaline throughout the morning, but rarely much.“It was just a nightmare. It’s not real,” is something you might say with great relief.What if

There is enormous freedom in remembering how little we actually know.It’s said that the human brain processes 11,000,000 bits of information per second but we are consciously aware of only about 50 bits per second. Isn’t that an incredible ratio? Eleven million bits of information, give or take, are being taken in and processed every

Has anyone ever told you that you’re out of your mind?It’s a huge compliment.Since when is being in your mind, with your head down low, out of the clouds, the responsible or wise way to be?Being out of your mind means you’re not caught up in the same limited reality everyone else is in. You’re

We are lived.We’re moved through life by the formless energy that is who-we-are. It guides us, bringing experience to life moment-by-moment in real time.We’re lived by the space beyond temporary, fluctuating form, where both everything and nothing exists. That infinite intelligence is pure potential, pregnant-with-everything, and also completely open and void of any thing. It’s

Five kids from the neighborhood are playing telephone in my backyard. The phrase is “Koala bears are cute and pandas bears are cuddly”.Willow whispers it to Sergio, who repeats it to Lilly, who passes it along to Lucas. By the time Lucas whispers the phrase to Miller, it comes out as “Koalas are cute when

A couple weeks ago, I boarded a 36 ft. RV with my family. That’s us just before taking off. We look happy, don’t we?The day we picked up the RV, it was huge. It had a king size bed, 1.5 baths, and 3 televisions. Insane, right?By the morning of Day 2, it was a little

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Willow begged and begged (and begged) for another dog after Buddha died.She made lists of extra chores she’d do and she did them all.She wrote a persuasive essay on why she should have another dog. She created slideshows showing us everything a dog needed and exactly how she’d train and care for a dog if

I knew someone with a very sensitive stomach. The tiniest bit of worry and she’d instantly feel sick.She cursed her stomach. Saw it as a weakness, a flaw.She wanted her stomach fixed. Her mind was full of potential ways I might help her toughen up her wimpy tummy. Could we train it to not react

Feeling unhappy is a habit.What else could it be?It’s not your nature. It’s not a feature of your conditions or surroundings. It’s not dictated by your DNA.It’s simply where your mind goes.You unknowingly picked it up at some point, the way you unknowingly pick up an accent or a virus.It’s where your mind goes so

Imagine yourself a chef.There is an infinite number of meals you could conceivably prepare, with a staggering number of ingredients available on this planet.And you, as a human being, are part of an even more infinite (it’s possible, trust me) source of creativity and brand new thought.Words can’t begin to describe the potential.But just like

Time and time again, I’ve seen that when we set aside a few minutes to be quiet and fall out of our thinking, there is an incredible feeling waiting on the other side.Without exception—in groups I’ve led and in those I’ve participated—when the room falls silent and our minds fall silent-er, at least a few

Our understanding of how human beings work is undergoing a pretty massive transformation. Love, compassion, and understanding used to be qualities we could bring into our lives to combat the very real problems of separation, confusion, and disconnection.Now we know that love, compassion, and understanding are who we are. They can’t be absent. Separation, confusion,

You’d like to be painfully stuck in a habit, addiction, or compulsion?Do you want change that feels like a tenuous, uphill battle?You’re in the right place! I’ve felt stuck in several of my own habits and I’ve talked with thousands of people who say they are stuck in a habit or addiction themselves. I’ve seen

“New Year, New You” is a marketing hook used to sell all sorts of things this month. It’s also one of my least favorite phrases ever.I’m not saying there is anything inherently wrong with it. They are just innocent little words.And I’m not saying there is anything intentionally salesy or manipulative about it. I’m sure

I recently heard an actor being interviewed about her process for getting into character. She explained that she creates a history—in her own mind—for the character she needs to become.The movie script points toward some history, of course. But this particular actress goes beyond that. She vividly imagines her character at various moments in her life.

It can look like people don’t change. Or at the very least, like they don’t change easily. That’s not true though.We are constantly changing, naturally and effortlessly.  We are wired for change.Our understanding of life is constantly evolving—just look at how radically and naturally your world view and understanding has changed from the time you were

We are standing at the cusp of a new understanding of the human experience. The field of psychology has always lacked a paradigm of unifying principles.“Hard” sciences like physics and chemistry have laws. There are basic principles—like the laws of motion in physics—that underlie and unify every discovery within those fields.Everything in physics and chemistry makes

There’s a common phenomenon among students of this understanding I study and share. We’ve seen some things about life that have been really helpful. We’ve had insights that have made clear what was previously murky. We’ve found relief from suffering at times, and we’ve probably all had the experience of laughing out loud at how seriously

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

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

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

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

We’ve all been in that place of thinking we need to decide or figure something out that we just can’t decide or figure out.We can’t see what we can’t see, until we can.But what do we do in that period of not seeing? We often scratch and claw at an answer, trying desperately to see

“The mystery of life is not a puzzle to be solved, but a reality to be experienced” –Frank Herbert Most things in life seem to fall into one of three categories:Things we think we understandThings we know we don’t understand, andThings our smart little human minds have never even fathomedI strongly encourage you to explore and

I don’t have enough space here to list all the wonderful things about the book, Whose Mind is it Anyway? by Lisa and Franco Esile. But I’ll list a few: This little book sneaks essential truths about human life into a FUN, quirky, creative package.You’re likely to experience an inner space and quiet–the voices in your

“Many therapies work on fixing an illusion…. You don’t need to do that. Come out of it altogether!” –MoojiIf you were in my Truth class in the past couple of weeks, you saw my chattering teeth. They are my new favorite prop to demonstrate how our minds talk, talk, talk, talk, talk constantly.Just like the wound-up

Recovery and change used to look very complicated to me. Binge eating, bulimia, depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia, low self-esteem, obsessive thoughts…they were all different in my mind. All very unique, each requiring their own brand of specialized attention.And recovery from any of them was a gamble; a better-get-lucky, roll of the dice. I thought you had

The fluid, easy, common sense way of being in the world that I write and speak about is both incredibly deep and profound, and also incredibly evident and obvious.   It is life-changing and core-shaking, and at the same time subtle and gentle.I’ve seen people grasp these truths and become literally unrecognizable, shocking everyone who knows

Oh geez, here I go again telling you that your mind makes stuff up.But I want to take it a step further, because I really want you to grasp the enormity of this.What if everything you’ve ever thought–simply by virtue of it being a thought that passes through your mind–is biased and slanted? What if

We all have one singular motivation for everything we do in life: we want to feel at home. There are a million ways you might express that one universal desire. You might say you want to feel like yourself, know your true self, be relaxed and on purpose in life……you might say you want to feel

There’s something quite intuitive about the fact that the more attention we pay something the more a part of our experience it becomes. Shower your plants, children, hobbies, or relationships with attention and they not only thrive, they become a bigger part of your life.Stare at–or even just think about–that cut on your leg and suddenly

I used to think ‘balance’ was the most boring word in the dictionary. I wanted to be off-the-charts, not perched in the middle of some bell curve (which is what I naively thought balance meant).  I was perfectly willing to accept myself as I was, as long as I was doing as well as I

Six years ago when I was preparing to give birth to Willow, I wanted to do things as naturally as possible. And I was scared. I had heard mostly birthing horror stories from the women in my family, all focused on what could (and sometimes, did) go wrong.  None of them spoke about the miracle of

I’d love for you to join me for what promises to be an enlightening, candid conversation on Tuesday, March 15th about finding true freedom from habits and addiction.I’ll be chatting with success coach Steve Chandler. If you don’t know Steve, he’s the author of 30 books and his newest project, called Death Wish, is all

We experience our inner world, not our outer world. The nature of the human mind and consciousness is such that it’s not possible to directly experience something other than what our own mind is creating and bringing to life.  I’m not saying that we put our own subjective spin on what happens out in the

I once heard that humans are the only living creatures that speed up when we’re lost. All other animals in nature slow down.  Non-human animals instinctively stop and regain their bearings if they aren’t sure where they are or where they are going. They slow way down, letting their mind settle and allowing clarity—and perhaps

The image to the right is my new favorite way of thinking about how the machine-that-is your-brain will lead you through life, if you let it.  Your brain is brilliant. It’s capable of incredible feats of intellect, memory, and logic. It keeps your body humming along and it has successfully kept you alive long enough

At first glance, it looks like the world around us determines how we feel. It looks like: Your cat runs away = you feel sad.  If your cat hadn’t run away = you’d feel better.And that’s probably true about the cat. I mean, it’s not true for everyone, always, across the board. But in general, when

We humans love to put metaphorical stakes in the ground.Our minds crave certainty and efficiency. As a way of feeling more certain, we love to label, classify, decide, and generally believe that we know what’s what.Here’s how this can look:Liz was struggling with a binge eating habit. To help her move past her habit, we talked

My husband is a major backseat driver. To his credit, he tries hard not to be. He is quiet while I’m driving. It’s not like he’s screaming directions or barking orders at me–at least not since that last mid-trip “discussion”…But he definitely tries to drive from the passenger’s seat. Every time I pull into traffic he’s

A couple years ago Willow came home from preschool repeating something her teacher had said in class.“You get what you get, and don’t throw a fit.”Maybe you’ve heard this before. I hadn’t, and I instantly loved it. Not only because it put a stop to a lot of “it’s not fair” arguments (it really did!),

I wanted to share a webinar I did in July. The topic was Rising Above What No Longer Serves You. (That also happens to be the theme of this year’s Being Human Weekend Workshop.)I really, really loved this conversation, especially where it goes in the second half as the other participants join in. I know it’s not

A couple years ago I went to a 4 day event in La Conner, Washington. Choosing to go was a complete no-brainer. But following through on my choice was very hard for me.It felt hard to decide that it would be okay to leave my kids for 4 days (with their extremely responsible father who cares

Willow started kindergarten last week. All summer, I listened as the moms in the neighborhood talked about the teachers at our local elementary school. Many of those moms are teachers themselves and all of them have children in the school already, so they had a lot of context I didn’t have.Which means I didn’t listen too

**This article was originally published here in October 2014**Imagine that you wrote yourself a really mean letter, detailing all of your flaws and faults. You put the letter in the mail, addressed to yourself.  A couple days later, it arrives in your mailbox.You read the letter. While it probably doesn’t feel good—it might bring back the

There’s a saying in A Course in Miracles that is something like this: all questions are from the ego. Only the ego wants to know.  The ‘you’ that you really are underneath the questioning mind has no questions.It has no beef with what’s going on.It doesn’t need anything that is not clear and obvious already.It

The beautiful piece below was written by a former client of mine. She, like all of us, is on learning curve in seeing how things work. At times her learning curve has been steep; other times a bit more flat. But she’s fully in this conversation, looking with curiosity and hope toward what there is to

One of my favorite things about understanding the way our mind creates our experience is that it’s so simple. It only works one way.The spiritual energy that is alive in all things makes it possible for thinking show up within us. That thinking is brought to life by our consciousness in the form of vivid, sensory-packed,

Please watch this 9 min video about the Second Annual Being Human Workshop in Ann Arbor this October. I’m really excited about it and I hope you’ll take the leap and choose to join us for a life-changing weekend.You can find out more here (after you watch the video, of course!)  Ready to sign up? Related

At times, it might feel like you need to run your own life.It can feel like you need to be constantly looking out so that you don’t get yourself into some mess. Predicting and preventing problems so that you’re not constantly solving problems.Nearly every day I talk with people who are asking themselves questions like

Imagine there’s an oven. A magic oven!  The magic oven has a timer that you can hear from wherever you are. Even the timer is magic because you don’t have to set it—the oven is so wise and so magical that the timer simply sounds off when your delicious creations are complete.Pretty magical, eh?!All you

I just learned that someone I only sort of know, but greatly admire and respect, is experiencing depression.I’m not sure it’s right for me to reach out personally at the moment. We aren’t close and I didn’t hear this news firsthand. But there a lot of things I’d like to tell her, if I could.I

Much as it pains me at times, my kids are growing up. (If you’re new here and you aren’t familiar with Willow and Miller, check out Being Human. Or these favorite, favorite, favorite posts.) They are still amazingly present little balls of life, but I see them getting caught up in their thought-created inner worlds more

I recently read a book that blew my mind.It’s called The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer (the author of The Untethered Soul, a book I reference and recommend at the end of Being Human). The Surrender Experiment is the true story of what the author experienced when he stopped trying to control everything that showed

My client and colleague, David Hamilton, recently interviewed me about understanding and ultimately having a different experience of anxiety.But as these conversations tend to go, what started off as something kind of specific to one human experience (anxiety) quickly expanded and unfolded into a look at the bigger nature of being human. David and I talk

I can’t tell you how often I see people looking for instant relief.  They wonder why their understanding doesn’t always help them in the way they think it should. “I hear you”, they say, “so why don’t I feel better?”Or, “I think I get what you’re saying but that doesn’t help me now. I still

The fact that all is well in the outside world—that there are conditions and circumstances but not problems, per se, out there—is something I’m continually discussing with people.  It’s quite simple, actually. And when people are already in a nice feeling, they see it right away.buy viagra capsules online https://www.mabvi.org/wp-content/themes/mabvi/images/new/viagra-capsules.html no prescription There’s something that

“The day you cease to travel, you will have arrived”—Japanese saying I heard somewhere The more you think about yourself, the less content you tend to be. You intuitively know this to be true, don’t you?  It works in reverse as well: the more content you are, the less you tend to think about yourself.Just look

One of the biggest obstacles to hearing something insightful and helpful is what I call ‘turning to the hows’. Imagine we’re talking; just chatting it up about life. Maybe you’re telling me about the strong cravings you have for a drink at 3 o’clock every afternoon, or you’re telling me about your panic attacks, or that

It can look like people don’t change. Or at the very least, like they don’t change easily.  That’s not true though.We are capable of gigantic jumps in understanding; enormous leaps in consciousness that leave us feeling as if we’re living a completely different life even when nothing externally has changed.Of course, these leaps don’t happen

I am unbelievably grateful that I am no longer caught up in my former binge eating habit.  But when someone asked me last week if I was proud of myself for leaving it behind, the question caught me off guard. I don’t feel proud at all. Pride isn’t the right word.Pride puts me in the picture

I recently spoke with a woman who was holding herself back because she was afraid that if she was too successful, she would make others uncomfortable. It was the old “Who do you think you are?” mentality—who did she think she was to do big things in life?Those weren’t her thoughts or her questions. They

Problems don’t have roots. They aren’t deep-seated.Just the opposite is true, actually. Any and all problems you might have are—relatively speaking–quite shallow. They are right there on the surface, created by (and existing completely within) the current moment in which you experience them.When the thought that brought those problems to the surface fades—as all thoughts do—the

Human beings are all the same. We are also extremely different.See, all humans have the same basic nature. We’re working from one universal operating system, just like 1000 people who have a brand new iphone. Before pictures, apps, and downloads start happening, those 1000 phones are the same. Fresh out of the box, humans are largely

The human brain is a pretty incredible organ, as far as organs go.  It is a remarkable, complex piece of machinery.And, it is a physical thing we can touch, observe and understand. Although we now know that it can change throughout life, it is still somewhat fixed, already formed, and bound by certain physical-world limitations.It’s

There is an idea I’ve been playing with lately—especially in the midst of visionaries, New Years’ resolution-ers, and game-planners. It’s the idea of waiting to see what you might do. Waiting to see what you might do is in contrast to deciding what to do. It’s the opposite of mentally making a choice, or coming down

I just found out that my upcoming book (it’ll be published by New Harbinger this time next year) will be called The Little Book of Big Change: The No-Willpower Approach to Breaking any Habit. Although I wouldn’t have necessarily thought to describe it as a “no-willpower approach”, it is an accurate description.It’s not that I’m

You’re never going to hear me tell you how to discipline your kid, when to ask for a raise at work, or what you should eat for dinner.I couldn’t possibly know the answers to those questions for you.  I barely know them for myself at times.What I can provide–which is enormously more helpful than giving

Last month I taught a class about ending unwanted habits, compulsions, and addictions based on the scientific the spiritual principles that freed me of my own binge eating disorder several years ago.  The basic principles are the same ones I write about here each week, and the ones around which my upcoming book on ending

I have a friend whose husband just walked out on her and her three young children. She is barely getting by financially, she has some mounting health issues due to the stress she’s experiencing, and she is caring for an elderly parent.  Her circumstances are tough in a way that I can’t pretend to understand.We

How It Looked Then Fourteen years ago I found myself with a diagnosis: panic disorder.I was having up to 25 panic attacks a day.  Many days, I spent more time in a state of acute anxiety than not.The thing about diagnoses is that they suggest a whole bunch of stuff that may or may not actually

This article is by Judy Sedgeman. Please visit her site to read the rest…it is so worth the click over there. I know you’re going to love it too. Lately I’ve talked with several clients who are sure that “fixing” something in their circumstances will bring them happiness.One is determined to find a job in a bigger

There is a popular saying in addiction recovery. Your best thinking got you here.You did what you did …you’re always doing what you’re doing…because it seemed like the thing to do in that moment. Your best thinking got you here.That doesn’t mean part of you didn’t know there was another way. When you have several

Maybe you’ve had a time in your life when there were no particular goals you were working toward and nothing in particular you were dreaming about.When, if someone walked up to you on the street and granted you a wish, you’d need a few minutes to place your order?I have clients in that place and

When I first read this short blog post by my friend Bonnie, I knew I’d want to share with you all at some point. She writes about the evolution so many of us go through. I went through it too, very similar to how Bonnie describes it.Imagine this—maybe you can relate:  You’re floating through life pretty

A few weeks ago a friend said something to me—when I was in the thick of some very heavy thinking—that resulted in a huge wave of comfort and relief.  He said, “…thoughts are an expression of universal energy, always fluctuating and finding the best course.”I understand that insights are as subjective as our taste in

The people I work with are smarter than your average bear. They are resourceful, bright, successful people.The other day, a man I find especially bright and resourceful (if I had a question about anything I’d ask this guy, knowing he could find the answer in a flash), told me he was looking for a way

Have you ever wondered why we’re so set on taking advice from others?  When we ask someone else what they think or what they would do, we get their wisdom, their perspective, and a plan of action that would work for them.We do not always get wisdom, perspective, or a plan of action that would work

I’d really love it if you’d read this hilarious and entertaining article.    My friend Lisa wrote it about her year of silence. Her year of silence was a long time ago, but as you can imagine, spending a year in silence is kind of a big deal in one’s life. So it took her

The concept of denial is a somewhat unfortunate one. Not because people don’t sometimes push things they don’t want to face out of their awareness. They surely do. But because we innocently use the concept of denial to make our mental health look like a problem.When you’re not suffering to the degree you think you should

One day several months ago, a woman named Jen reached out to me to let me know how much she loved Being Human. She heard something really profound in the ideas in that book (ideas that I take no ownership of, by the way. They are universal principles, not my unique thoughts). Jen heard something so

It can be confusing to hear me say ‘do nothing’, or that ‘there is nothing to do’ with regard to many of the things we consider problems in our lives. When problems show up as things that need fixing, doing nothing can feel ineffective at best; like resignation or powerlessness at worst.When I talk about

We just bought a house.  It’s a great house, but it also needs a lot of work. Some of the work is relatively small — like painting every ceiling, wall, door, baseboard and square inch of crown molding — while some is much bigger — like a complete kitchen and master bathroom remodel.We’ve been working

A wise, brave client just shared with me that the way she prays has changed.  Instead of praying for a solution to her problems as she has for the past 50 years, she’s recently found herself praying for a change in perspective.Instead of praying for the motivation to write her book because that seems to

It’s easy to see that there is an intelligence behind life. We’re powered by something larger than ourselves. We all call it different names and think of it in unique ways, but nearly everyone of any background, culture, or religion (or lack of religion) tends to agree on some beyond-human force that inexplicably grows trees, spins

Michael Neill shared the poem If by Rudyard Kipling on a call I was on with him a few weeks back and it struck me as an excellent thing to share with you. The way of traveling through life described in the poem is entirely possible. It is the promise of the sort of understanding

Like most high school and college students, I went through a lot of summer jobs.  I was a hostess at Applebee’s. I worked in a Ford Motor Company plant where I drove a hi-lo, picking car parts to ship off to assembly plants around the world. I was a bartender at a dive bar outside

People sometimes contact me for help with “communication problems”. They typically claim that their communication is being misunderstood by the people in their life, and they want to me to teach them to communicate more effectively.Or they say their relationships are suffering from poor communication but they haven’t the foggiest idea how to communicate any

I bet you’ve known someone whose feelings shifted and they decided they were no longer in love with the person they used to be in love with. Maybe it’s even been you. When you fall out of love, it can really look like the person you used to love changed. Something that was once there

“Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.” ~Cicero  You know that state of confusion where you feel really unsure about what to do—you’re talking about it with all of your friends, making lists, weighing options, lying awake all night?As truly confused and unsure as you may feel in those moments, you’re not. You have

“If the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world.” –Sydney Banks  There is so much less to do in life than you might think.Have you noticed how sometimes, when you’re not trying or doing anything in particular, you find yourself bounced back into a

I realize I sound a bit crazy when I talk about having bad days that aren’t so bad (as I do here. And here). It is so comfortable and…different…to not fear what you feel. To really get that whatever is going on for you is human, perfectly okay, not the least bit meaningful, and on its

“We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by thinking about everything. Think. Think. Think. You can never trust the human mind anyway. It’s a death trap.” ~Sir Anthony HopkinsI have a special treat for you-my voice!Okay, my voice may not be all that special but I thought you might get tired of

Positive feelings are built into who you are. They are part of your design, they were in your original blueprints, they come pre-installed when you were born.  You can’t think your way to positive feelings, at least not in any real or lasting way. You can think happy thoughts and feel happy feelings, or think

“On a deeper level you are already complete. When you realize that, there is a playful, joyous energy behind what you do” –Eckhart Tolle I was recently speaking with a friend about what it feels like to connect with your underlying, always-there, state of well-being. I attempted to describe the indescribable—the feeling underneath the mental

As much as we may say we want the freedom to do as we choose, it often looks easier to be told what to do. “Just tell me”, they say, “should I apologize or not?”“Is it okay that my spouse and I fight, or does that mean something is wrong with our relationship?”“What’s the best

Willow regularly has little love fests with whomever is around. They usually contain a handful of the following very enthusiastic declarations:I love my Mommy and Daddy!I love everyone in the world, even the people I don’t know yet!I love my brother so much! Miller is such a cutie baby, he’s my favorite baby ever and

Let’s talk about two minds: Little Mind and Big Mind. Little Mind is your personal thinking. It is the thinking that you grab onto and identify with; the subjective, biased thought that occurs to you and results in your own unique view of reality.Big Mind is…well…it’s not that. It’s something else; something a little less

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

My second book is nearly done. I’m going to be totally honest without concern for how this sounds: I think it’s really good. I am super proud of this book in a way I never really was with Modern Enlightenment (which may have had more to do with post-pregnancy hormones than the  book itself, but

There are some people you can’t easily avoid, much as you might like to. That’s the bad news.The good news is that they don’t have to get under your skin quite the way they do. No offense, but they get under your skin because of how you think about them, not because of who they

“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

There’s nothing more attractive than a mind that’s willing to change. Because think about it—a mind that is fluid and moving, not dug in, entrenched or made up, is a guarantee that your experience is going to change. It’s a promise that you won’t stay upset for long, that things are always changing, and that

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

It’s pretty amazing what people do because they think it will give them a better life. They wake up insanely early and go to bed insanely late. They go to college, they set goals. They work hard or they refuse to work hard. They decide to be ambitious. They get married or they stay single; they

This is a fantastic article by my friend Lisa Esile. “The greatest obstacle to connecting with our joy is resentment.” ~Pema ChodronForgiveness is good, right? I don’t mean in a heal the planet kind of way—I mean in a selfish, me me me kind of way.We want to let go of our resentments and connect

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

“We may have all come in different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.” ~Martin Luther King Jr. I once had a totally commonplace, uneventful thought that transformed the way I viewed relationships.I’m not sure that it was mine; it certainly wasn’t anything groundbreaking or unique. I may have read it somewhere, I can’t

Time moves. Quickly. Quite unfairly, it often appears to speed up the older you are.But there is a way to combat that time-fly that doesn’t involve a time machine. It’s being fully in your life today. Moving right in, inhabiting your moments and experiences.Here’s an easy rule of thumb:Experiencing your thinking about life = time

Do you think there is something from your past that needs to be healed? I used to believe that the past required healing. But when you think about it, how could that be?The past is over. It’s nonexistent today. How could something that doesn’t exist need anything?The past only comes up today in your thinking

What percentage of your day do you suppose you’re in your head, trying to figure something out? Maybe you’re thinking about what’s for dinner or using concepts and memory to solve a problem at work.Maybe you’re trying to arrive at the best way to discipline your kids, ask your boss if you can leave work

It’s endlessly fascinating to me to notice the filter of thought that floats over the screen of my awareness. So much of that thick thought filter isa) Basically the same as yesterdayb) Based on something that happened in the past, orc) Stemming from beliefs I formed long ago that most likely aren’t relevant today.One of

Who are you, really? I think it’s a pretty safe bet that if you find yourself reading these words right now, you see yourself as something much bigger than a collection of blood and guts and skin and hair. You’re obviously not your body.It’s probably just as likely that you don’t view yourself as your

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

I heard a story about a guy who had no long-term memory and very little short-term memory. He kept a journal. By the time he wrote in his journal each night, he had pretty much forgotten everything that had happened that day. He was living in a perpetual state of present moment awareness.As it turns

Traveling with children is totally enlightening. I live largely in my thinking.This is my experience: Thinking…“We have three, maybe four hours between wake up time and time for Miller’s first nap.  Two to three hours once you factor in breakfast and baths.What should we do?We should go to the beach. Will it be warm enough

When our thoughts drift to- and fixate on- horrible events in the world, we hurt.  If you pay attention, you’ll notice that your thoughts will also drift away from those things and you don’t hurt in those moments.  Even in the middle of unspeakable pain, thoughts part like the clouds and the sun peaks out

In his book The Untethered Soul, Michael Singer says something so obviously simple and true that it’s been messing with my head ever since.  (Truth is astonishingly simple. Always.) He says we’re sitting on a planet spinning through outer space.Oh yeah!  I forgot. Did you?Maybe it’s partly my line of work, but I see people

I know for sure that the past can change. Your experience of life—past, present, future—comes from what you are thinking in any given moment.In the world of form…where things are solid and objective events go down in the books, I suppose the past is not easily changed.But in the world of experience (which, let’s face

Here’s what I’m grateful for right now: being human.The whole of it. Everything that being human entails. I used to think being human kind of sucked most of the time. With our habitual patterns that run on auto-pilot and our irrationally fearful thoughts and our unpredictable emotions.Human-ness felt like a big hassle. I would fantasize

“Letting go gives us freedom and freedom is the only condition for happiness.” -Thich Nhat HanhMost people I know are carrying extra weight—and I’m not talking about gaining a few pounds.  I’m talking about the mental and emotional weight we lug around with us. We carry it everywhere—like a backpack full of bricks—and it weighs

I recently spent an entire week writing down all my thoughts that began with the words “I should”. I went through a lot of paper.Some were blatantly obvious. They flowed from my head and straight out of my mouth, like when I told hubby, “I should be working, it’s almost 9am” as we cleaned up

I have a beautiful new client who wants to feel better. She has a lot of circumstances in her life that no one would wish for.Because of those circumstances, her well-meaning friends expect her to be in constant misery. Her dear, benevolent friends believe that happiness and peace of mind come from the outside-in.They believe

When you feel really bad, fixing things, feeling better, or getting back on track can be way too tall an order. Sometimes the best you can do is to focus on not making things worse than they already are.  In Wired for Joy, the affirmation is: ‘Minimize Harm’.When things are just a little bit stressful,

I love studying the science of happiness, ways to help people out of pain and how to maximize success, whatever that looks like for you.  But there is a down side to all of this self-help. Besides the fact that it can be taken to imply that you need “help” (which you don’t, btw), teaching

Have you ever come across a word that ignites something in you? A single word that delivers a viscera punch, while something deep inside of you responds “Yes!”? ‘Explore’ is that word for me. Explore!Explore encapsulates almost all of my great, personal loves in life.Read the rest on All Things Girl… Related posts: No related

We’re in the process of weaning Willow from her pacifier. Let me clarify what I mean by “the process”.  We took it away 10 days ago and now we’re dealing with the sad, disruptive, horrible fall out.She loved her Nuk. It soothed her, comforted her, put her right to sleep.She misses that soothing now, big

Here’s something I’ve been re-learning lately: Just because I can doesn’t mean I should.  Just because I can get up to exercise at 6 every morning does not mean I should.Just because I can work until midnight does not mean I should.Let this be the new anthem of the good-girl. The perfectionist, over-achiever, must-do-more junkie:

A client recently asked for some motivation. Specifically, she wanted to be motivated to consistently take some actions that she was currently being inconsistent about.Even more specific…how ‘bout I just tell you exactly what she said?Client:“I exercise sporadically, I make efforts towards finding a new job sporadically, I take care of my needs sporadically. I

What’s in your future? Hopefully, not much. When your future is empty—as in wide open, blue ocean, blank slate—you’re sitting pretty to put whatever you want there.Most of us do not have an empty future. Most of us have a jam-packed future. Do you know what it’s full of?The past.We drag all sorts of stuff

…In case you’re stuck, I’ll share another example. One from my life. It’s not my primary or earliest BAD, but it’s one off them.  My mom was dating a man I strongly disliked. I thought I’d be really mature about it and have a talk with her about finally dumping him. I was about 9