challenging thoughts

Empowering people to make strengthening choices

Managing Anxiety: My Personal Story of Coping With Stress

Managing Anxiety: My Personal Story of Coping With Stress

People are experiencing higher levels of anxiety, in our society today, than ever before. So I want to offer you a powerful process for managing anxiety by sharing a personal story from early in my career. A Daunting Request I had just graduated from the University of Minnesota with my Ph.D. in counseling psychology and […]

By rogerkallen


Read More
Three Strategies to Shape Your Thinking and Feel More Joy

Three Strategies to Shape Your Thinking and Feel More Joy

  Your brain is a lot like Amazon.com. But instead of books, socks, and vacuum filters (or whatever you buy on Amazon), your brain sells THOUGHTS. Millions of them. And you are the customer. Every day, every minute, inside your mind, you are searching for thoughts, browsing through thoughts, and clicking on the ones you […]

By Emily Ricks


Read More
Our Defining Moment: Standing Tall in a Pandemic

Our Defining Moment: Standing Tall in a Pandemic

I’ve been thinking about my parents lately. They were part of what we commonly refer to today as the “greatest generation,” those souls born between 1901 to the late 1920s. We call them the “greatest generation” because they lived through a number of defining moments including World War I, the Spanish Flu epidemic, the great […]

By rogerkallen


Read More
The Empowerment Model

The Empowerment Model

In this article, I want to talk about “The Empowerment Model.” For years, I’ve talked about it in the context of “key moments,” those situations and events in which our emotions are engaged and it’s easy to react or act out our negative feelings. But I like thinking of it as an empowerment model because by […]

By rogerkallen


Read More
The Courage to be Imperfect

The Courage to be Imperfect

I heard from many of you a few weeks back about my article entitled “The Belief That I’m not Enough.” Not surprisingly, the topic resonated with a lot of people and so I’d like to continue this theme by exploring ways we can conquer this self-damaging belief and create self-acceptance and confidence. I thought I’d start […]

By rogerkallen


Read More
How to Overcome Negative Self-Talk

How to Overcome Negative Self-Talk

Each one of us talks to ourselves much of the time. Not only does this self-talk determine our moods and behavior, they literally become self-fulfilling prophecies and eventually define our reality.

By rogerkallen


Read More
How to be Optimistic

How to be Optimistic

Life involves stress, even heartache, for all of us. Furthermore, studies of people who are happier than average show that they experience the same number of failures, disappointments and pain as anyone. They are happier not because life treats them differently, but because they use different strategies for dealing with their difficulties, strategies that can […]

By rogerkallen


Read More
Do You Know Your Three “R’s”?

Do You Know Your Three “R’s”?

We’ve been talking a great deal in recent blogs about how to distinguish between reality and your perceptions. You do, we learned, have control over how you feel about a situation. Why is this so important to understand? Because your flawed or skewed perceptions of reality can actually alter reality. Let me explain:

By rogerkallen


Read More

What My Customers and Students are Saying

Write Your Story

    Once you submit your story, I'll review it and get back to you. This may take a few days. I'll let you know when it will be published and invite you to then share your post with your friends and family.