Plus, new blog post and podcast episode every Wednesday
Healing from our past requires more than just time. It means confronting old wounds and working through them to find a new beginning.
Today on my podcast and blog, learn how to stop the cycle of destructive patterns and rediscover your resilience.
Follow 8 actionable steps to help you heal, find new strengths, and redefine success on your own terms.
Are you happy with your life?
If not, how can you make it better?
Too often, we don’t explore options because we assume there isn’t anything we can do to make it better. Yet, it is up to us to think through how we will survive and how to go beyond survival.
Melvin Witmer and Thomas Sweeney created a holistic model for wellness that listed five major life tasks needed to be whole in mind, body, spirit, and community. Those five life tasks were spirituality, self-regulation, work, friendship, and love.
Today on my blog, we’ll take a closer look at those five life tasks.
Can you laugh when the expectations you had for life have been turned upside down and inside out and you wonder how you will make it through another day? Your world has changed forever.
When my husband and I brought our third child home from the hospital after he was born, it was with joy and excitement. He was a husky, healthy ten-pound baby boy. However, by six months we knew something wasn’t right as he still was unable to hold up his head.
Many months later, once again, we brought our son home from another extended hospital visit where extensive tests had been done. Only this time, we were in shock. The final diagnosis was that Don had cerebral palsy of the worst magnitude.
When was the last time you laughed – I mean, really laughed – until the tears rolled down your cheeks, your sides hurt, and you gasped for air? You laughed and laughed and didn’t want to stop!
Something tickled your funny bone so that in an instant you saw the world differently – your situation was so bad, it was funny – your problem so profound, it was laughable – the ludicrous became the comical. The world had turned upside down and you laughed as you swung in the absurdity of the moment.
What precipitated that laughter? How did it change how you felt about your world, your situation, yourself? How did it change the minutes and hours afterwards?
Our first response to any drastic life change is usually shock, then denial. When you lose your job, can’t make your house payment, or have been diagnosed with a life-altering or life-threatening disease, the crisis takes center stage and everything else is blocked from view.
Reframing takes what life has handed us and looks at it in an expanded way.
The following story illustrates this point. Years ago, I worked for a company that led two weeks of day-long classes for injured workers. In these classes we taught attendees how pain disrupts our lives, what we bring to the pain experience and ways to go beyond this pain.
As individuals began to apply the information we gave them to their personal situations, it was amazing and encouraging to see what a difference it made in their outlook for the future.
“But I say to you that hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”
—Luke 6:27
Really – pray for them?
Jesus said, forgive seventy times seven (Matthew 18:22). We take it as a moral imperative. But it isn’t just Jesus who tells us how important forgiveness is, science confirms it as well. In fact, not to forgive is putting a slow death sentence on yourself, as the theologian Frederick Buechner so aptly describes.
In this article and podcast episode, I’ll show you 7 ways to make forgiveness a gift, rather than an obligation.
To seek revenge is to want retribution – we want people to pay for what they did. When the injustice is repeated over and over again in our mind, the desire for revenge increases.
The flames of anger, hurt, and betrayal continue to be stoked until we have a raging furnace inside us. We have become a victim.
Resentment and revenge are bitter pills you continue to chew without relief. In today’s blog post and podcast episode, I’m sharing a story story titled, “The Unwanted Package.” The story beautifully illustrates why it’s so important to set down that heavy burden of resentment.
Anger, like all emotions, has a purpose.
It can help us survive, can motivate us to take action and make appropriate and necessary changes. It protects us when life threatens us psychologically or physically.
But when anger becomes habitual, it can be harmful.
When used repeatedly as our typical response to things that irritate us, we end up with an anger problem that can be catastrophic over time. That’s because, when we’re angry, we tend to be reactive. We no longer think rationally.
In this article (with accompanying audio), I’ll help you understand anger and will suggest practical things you can do if you are feeling constantly angry.
Fear is a critical survival warning system.
It triggers our fight/flight response system to meet any threat by fleeing, fighting, or remaining frozen in place.
Fear can be our friend, or it can be our enemy. It can prepare, instruct, and keep us safe; or it can become a huge threatening shadow that keeps us locked in doubt, worry, uncertainty, and helplessness.
In this article (with accompanying audio), I’ll help you recognize the differences between unhealthy fear and healthy fear, and I’ll share preventive measures you can put in place when you sense the fear dragon breathing down your back.
It means making an assumption or hypothesis and testing its validity through objective analysis.
How accurate is my thinking? How can I prove or disprove that? Can my thoughts be modified or expanded? What are the underlying beliefs?
Unchallenged, our first automatic thoughts to potential catastrophes can keep us in a fear, anxiety, or panic mode.
Challenging our thoughts allows us to get out of highly charged emotions while affirming our ability to be flexible, roll with the punches and believe in ourselves. Read on…