Peeling Away Layers of Our Onion
Just when we think we have completed a body of personal work like overcoming shame, self-loathing or chronic insecurity, it can sneak back up on us. The tendency is to think that we've…
Writing
Dismember to Re-member
Collectively we are all being forced to reassess what's important and what matters. Shelter-in-place is forcing many of us to look within, to find out what we're made of, what's driving us.…
Blind Spots
Lettuce in your teeth is no big deal, but it stings to learn about it after the meeting, when everyone saw it, and nobody said a word. People stay quiet because pointing out someone's flaw…
Meet Your Inner Critic
Somewhere in you there may be a part that doesn't buy your own worth. It has the evidence ready, filed and tabbed. A chain of failures. Every criticism you ever took. Side-by-side…
Befriending the Inner Child
One of my clients describes this experience she had in grammar school. Being the chubbiest and slowest of the other kids performing wind sprints in Mrs. Wahlberg's P.E. class, my client…
Let Go of Perfectionism
Perfect is a goal you can't reach and can't put down. Chasing it grinds you down, makes you afraid of risk, and leaves a steady hum of not-enough under everything you finish. Almost every…
Burnout
Several years ago, I completed burned out in my work. I had started to feel a dimming of interest in a work project I’d been involved in. I'd been co-running a yoga program in San Francisco…
Facing Negativity
Mary was 48 and had spent her whole life driven to make it big in the corporate world. She arrived at my office and said, "I am totally burnt out and am just going through the motions of my…
Learning from Adversity
Early in his career, Abraham Lincoln was hired onto a celebrated patent case. He threw himself into the work, prepared a long brief, and traveled hundreds of miles to Cincinnati for the…
The Thread
There's a common formula for finding your purpose: look for the spot where what you care about, what you're good at, and what the world needs all overlap.
Burn Out
When Bob first came to me, he wasn't sleeping. Panic kept him up most of the night. He was taking sedatives to get down and amphetamines to stay sharp through the day, and the cocktail his…
Emotional Strength
We build a guard around the heart. Most of us do it early, to keep pain out, and we keep it up long after the danger that built it is gone. We get good at not feeling. There's always…