Empowering people to make strengthening choices
My mother, who passed away twenty-one years ago, has been on my mind these past several days. She loved this time of year—the decorations, the music, the meals, the shopping, the gift making and giving, the surprises and, perhaps most importantly, being with family at a special, even sacred season. For her, the holidays were […]
In my studies of gratitude, I came across a beautiful story of gratitude told by Maureen Deuterma. It offers a perspective of what matter most. Email from a Friend I received an email from a friend of mine today sharing the good news that he had been promoted to vice president in a prestigious company. […]
I remember a Peanuts cartoon from years back. Here’s Charlie Brown, shoulders slumped, head down and arms at his side as Lucy approached. He says to Lucy, “This is my depressed stance. When you’re depressed it makes a lot of difference in how you stand. The worst thing you can do is straighten up and […]
I my last article I talked about how our brains and bodies respond to stress. Today I want to explore the goal of stress management which is achieving an optimal state of arousal in the middle of a threat. As you can see from this diagram, the mind can be in optimal arousal (necessary to […]
Stress is our natural response to a situation or event that we perceive as challenging, even threatening. Stress is good insofar as it motivates us to take positive action or prompts us to adapt to a threat. But it can become harmful when we lack the confidence or ability to adapt in a healthy way. […]
How Resilient Are You? If you’ve been following me then you know that I’ve been writing about resilience. So today, I’m offering you a resilience survey to do a self-assessment on four dimensions of resilience. As you do the assessment, you are establishing a baseline for not only thinking about resilience but measuring your growth […]
I define resilience as our ability to handle hard things. It has to do with the thought and behavior patterns that we develop in the face of adversity and hardship. In my article, today, I want to share some general thoughts about the nature of adversity and then explore ways we can predict resilience and […]
Our Children Can Learn to do Hard Things My last blog was about doing hard things as a key to resilience. Any success requires that we develop the discipline to do hard things rather than procrastinating, avoiding, or taking the path of least resistance. Learning to do hard things not only leads to success but […]
