Negative Thinking: A Most Dangerous Addiction
Have you ever noticed how much time you spend thinking about negative or painful situations, ruminating and replaying what’s not working in your life? It’s not just you. The last statistic I read claimed 80 percent of our thoughts are negative, and 95 percent repetitive. Strangely, the more negative an experience, the more we return to it. Like […]
When Is It Time to Stop Trying to Fix Ourselves?
Are you a self-help junkie? Even if you don’t have a stack of books on your bedside table detailing the newest ways to fix yourself, you still might be. And it wouldn’t be your fault if you were. Our conditioning from a very young age is to believe that we need to become better, new and improved versions of ourselves, even […]
Are You A Blamer? How to Break the Blaming Habit.
This is the third blog in a series on the topic of blame. The first two blogs were written to help those who feel consistently blamed while this installment in for those who do the blaming. It was not my original intention to write a piece for blamers, but I was inundated with (and inspired […]
When You’re In Relationship With a Blamer
There is no better time for growing than the holiday season. And not just growing in the belly, but in the heart and mind as well. Family interactions, particularly those that go on over a period of consecutive days, offer profound opportunities for self-awareness, learning, and evolution. Our greatest challenges are our greatest teachers, and they often […]
Who’s In Charge, Computers or Humans?
Something remarkable happened yesterday, not remarkable good but remarkable crazy. I was riding in one of the new group taxis that have taken over New York City, and we were traveling from midtown West to midtown East. I was the next to be dropped off and there were umpteen routes that we could take to […]
When Someone We Love Believes Something We Hate
A dear friend believes something that I think is absurd — unimaginable in fact. That he could think what he thinks is not just absurd and unimaginable to me, but also distasteful, and profoundly difficult to respect. Complicating the matter in this case is that what he believes is something that I “should” do, that […]
The #1 Most Important Relationship Skill
I received an outpouring of feedback on my recent blog, “What We Really Want and Almost Never Get,” about the profound importance of listening in relationships. The comments confirm that what men and women alike most desire in our relationships is to be heard without judgment and understood where we are. So many have poignantly […]
How to Live in the Real World (Minus One Troubling Word)
Of all the words that exist in our language, “should” may be the one that creates the most suffering. Every aspect of our life is affected and infiltrated by it: I “should” be, he/she “should” be, my life “should” be, this moment “should” be… Sometimes we utter our “shoulds” out loud, sometimes we think them consciously, […]
Why We Hold Grudges and How to Let Them Go: It’s Not About the Person Who Wronged You, It’s About Who You Want to Be
Karen, 65, is very angry at her ex-boyfriend. It seems he asked her best friend out on a date, a few days after breaking up with Karen. He was her boyfriend in high school. Paul, 45, can’t forgive his sister, because, as he sees it, she treated him like he didn’t matter when they were children. […]
Loving Yourself on Valentine’s Day
With Valentine’s Day coming, love is the topic of the moment. When we think about love, we generally think in terms of who loves us and whom we love, both of which refer to others. But what if Valentine’s Day were really about falling in love with ourselves, cherishing ourselves, and knowing ourselves as manifestations […]