Category: Learning

Have you ever felt the frustration of unmet expectations quickly turn into intense negative emotions? Bound in bitterness, it is sometimes hard to see a way out. I recently had frustrations quickly escalate into negative emotions that sent me spiraling.    I’ve always looked forward to the “empty nesting” phase of our life. The time to pursue new hobbies, interests, …

Happiness is often considered one of those ever elusive emotions. We seem to search for it as if it were some tangible object. The truth is, happiness is something we feel despite what might be going on in our life – it is a state of being independent of circumstance. There is no magical switch or special pill to change …

These gaps represented, to me, the various traps or stumbling blocks we can fall captive to if we are not mindful as we move along in life.

Isn’t it fascinating how good we are at procrastination when it comes to things with the promise of long-term pleasure, and we’re terrible at putting off things that produce short-term satisfaction?  Tim Urban calls it the instant gratification monkey.  Sometimes instant gratification has a stronger pull than the long term pleasure of being proactive. I get it. The struggle is …

Depression can be a hard one to understand, especially if you’ve never experienced it first hand yourself. Learning to support a loved one with depression is not intuitive when what we want more than anything is to offer help. Someone I love is struggling with depression, and it’s been hard for me to understand. I’ve had been periods in my …

Last fall I was challenged to “unplug” for a full week. During this digital detox, I was asked to pay attention to how I felt, notice any changes in my behavior, and watch for how many times I had the impulse to pick up my phone. The challenge helped me gain some interesting insights and learn to think twice before …

Many of you know how I love knowledge. Learning new skills and improving my understanding is almost like a drug for me. I thirst after it. So, when I had an opportunity to take an online class to enhance my business acumen I jumped. One of the exercises in the first module focused on discovering your strengths. The compelling thing …

Love comes so naturally in some cases.  In others, it doesn’t happen automatically so it must be learned.  This is true because we’re all different, just as we’re supposed to be. And that’s all well and good until we have to learn to love a difficult person. For me, it was in this learning process where realized how love is …

The day we officialy became empty nesters I was caught off guard in the way loneliness enveloped me. I was drowning in sadness as I found myself wandering around the empty bedrooms remembering the funniest of details about raising our family. For years I had been looking forward to having them all leave home, and when it finally came I …

When I want to create some sort of change in my life, whether it is for personal growth or development, I typically start looking at what habits might help. A Habit is an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary, whereas, a goal is a result or achievement to which an effort is directed. While in …

Let’s talk about guilt? It’s not a great feeling, is it? By definition, guilt is a feeling of deserved blame for something. It is an emotion we associate with being sad. When we use guilt the right way, it keeps our values and actions in check because it is something we want to avoid. It moves us to act and …

Life can seem busy. It’s easy to feel like we’re always caught running and doing something, but sustaining a busy lifestyle isn’t always in our best interests. Usually, the first thing to get pushed aside is the time for self-care. Neglecting our physical or emotional health leads to feeling overwhelmed, stressed and anxious. If you have issues with insomnia, headaches, …