“How dare she do such a thing?” “I’ll never get over this!”  “I want him to pay for his actions!” “I’ll never be able to trust him/her/anyone again.” When we’ve been hurt by someone, any or all of these thoughts can plague us. We’re filled with (and tormented by) anger, resentment, tension, anguish, anxiety, and […]

We all only have 24 hours a day. So, we cannot accomplish everything nor be everything to everyone. The big question is, how do you make time for what’s most important to you both personally and professionally? How do you manage your energy so that at the end of the day you feel as if […]

Granted – it can feel reassuring to come determine a reason why we or other people behave in certain ways. However, just having insight and knowing (or thinking that we know) the reason underlying people’s motivations does not always lead to taking effective action regarding the situation. While, to quote Socrates, “The unexamined life is […]

Whether or not you set resolutions for the New Year, you probably would like to maintain or increase your happiness quotient. If so, the following tips may prove to be helpful: Write down three positive things that happened to you each day and think about how and why they occurred. Maybe they seemed to happen […]

How do you usually respond when life just isn’t going the way you want it to? Maybe your spouse forgot your birthday, you got a flat tire on that day when you simply have to get to an important meeting, or you received a scary health diagnosis. What to do? Yes, you could yell at […]

Do you find it hard to take a compliment, believing that you don’t deserve praise? Do you focus on minor mistakes you’ve made, rather than acknowledging all of the things you do well? If a friend compliments your smile, do you brush off the remark with a derogatory comment about yourself? If so, you may […]

How do you cope when you’re rejected by that college you’d pinned your hopes on attending? How do you pick yourself up off the floor when your marriage of 15 years falls apart? And how do you manage when you’re facing a grim medical diagnosis? Life can be challenging enough when we’re just dealing with […]

Ah, relationships. They run the gamut from exhilarating, passionate, and deeply intimate to combative, estranged, and hostile. For some of us, there are numerous and widely varying adjectives we would use to describe our current relationship. Since relationships  consist of two people who are continuing to learn and grow (preferably for the good), we are […]

It’s usually pretty easy to feel good about ourselves when things are going our way, when we’ve been making significant progress on our personal and professional intentions, and when we’re in harmony with the important people in our lives. However, when we fall short of our own expectations, disappoint others, or fail to achieve a […]

Our minds are meaning-making machines. First and foremost, our minds try to protect us by figuring out how to avoid danger. Our minds are interpreters of our world and immediate circumstances. It’s a fact of nature – we are instinctively on high alert for danger, because first and foremost we want to survive.  After all, […]