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Who Were You Before the World Got Its Hands On You?
“Finding yourself is not really how it works. You aren’t a 10-dollar bill in last winter’s coat pocket. You are…
What Your Breath Can Do
Of course, your breath can keep you alive. But it can do so much more than that. It can: Bring…
Taking Control of Your Stories Part 1
Our brains are designed to have thoughts; we have 2,100-3,300 thoughts each hour. Most of the thoughts we have are…
Taking Control Of Your Stories Part 2
Our stories influence whether we are happy, sad, anxious, calm, angry or whatever. They may make us feel like we…
Thoughts, Chatter and Your Next Chapter
Thoughts Thoughts are images and sound bites, not reality. Scientists estimate that we have 50,000-80,000 thoughts per day. That is…
Unraveling Rumination Part 2
“What may start as an innocuous voice builds up over time until it becomes the loudest thing in your head…
Unraveling Rumination Part 1
“Rumination is often fueled by feelings of fear, shame, and inadequacy. Because self-compassion directly counters these insecurities, it can help…
Processing Your “Stuff” With RAIN
“Things happened to you that you are not comfortable with. And you suppress them. You shove them away. You resisted…
Listening to Understand and Love
“We know we’re in the presence of a good listener when we get that sweet, affirming feeling of really being…
Letting in Love and Kindness
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that…
Inner Strength: Cultivating Calm & Stability
To face your challenges and your vulnerabilities, you need inner strength. To grow our inner strength, we need to cultivate…
Treating Your Inner Critic Like a Bad Habit
A healthy inner critic helps you recognize where you’ve gone wrong and what you need to do to set things…
Fierce Compassion: Pathways to Personal and Collective Well-Being
Just as fierce self-compassion can contribute to our personal fulfillment and well-being, fierce compassion contributes to collective well-being. If you…
Defining and Communicating Your Boundaries
Types of Boundaries Many of us have few if any clear, explicit boundaries in place. While we may say the…
Choosing, Implementing, and Sabotaging Your Boundaries
What is a BoundaryBe awareOf what isUnacceptable andNormalize saying no.Do what is best for youAnd Know that it’s not yourResponsibility…
Strong Back, Soft Front
“When we cultivate a strong back and soft front within ourselves, we can weather the storms of life with strength,…
Meditation: Back to The Basics
That is what this is all about. We are training our brains to be more mindful because mindfulness allows us…
Quit Being a Chameleon
“Pay attention to the inner sensibility; otherwise, you are adapting to the world as a chameleon to what others think…
What to Do in Difficult, Uncertain Times
My wishes for you:May you accept things the way they are.May you be undisturbed by the comings and goings of…
Is Your Brain Stuck in the Wrong Gear?
“It is as if your brain is stuck in the wrong gear and the judgments are quietly whirring just below…
Throwing Out Your Garbage Using RAIN
“Things happened to you that you are not comfortable with. And you suppress them. You shove them away. You resisted…
From Drama to Empowerment
“All of these roles require one person to be superior, right, good, and better than the other person, while the…
Looking Below the Line: What Roles Do You Play in the Dreaded Drama Triangle?
“High drama means high emotions. And when your emotions hijack you, they take over your ability to express yourself and make…
Empowering Your Inner Coach
“You’ve been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.” – Thich…
Your Body Knows When Your Mind Is Lying
“Your brain is a liar. It makes assumptions not rooted in fact, draws conclusions that are more about fear than any kind…
Staying On Course: Transforming Your Mental Chatter
“Chatter consists of the cyclical negative thoughts and emotions that turn our singular capacity for introspection into a curse rather…
Staying on Course: Changing Unproductive Habitual Tendencies
“No matter what you name it, if you want to change it, you have to rub your brain’s little orbitofrontal…
Digging for your Authentic Self: Identifying Your Obstacles
“Don’t carry your mistakes around with you. Instead, place them under your feet and use them as stepping stones to…
Digging for Your Authentic Self: Mapping Your Route
“It is in such small things that we fulfill the lessons of the heart. It is from our intentions that…
Digging for Your Authentic Self: Charting Your North Star
“Setting a long-term intention is like setting the compass of our heart. No matter how rough the storms, how difficult…
Digging for Your Authentic Self: What’s Important
“Men are not free when they are doing just what they like. Men are only free when they are doing…
Cultivating Equanimity
“Tis easy enough to be pleasant, when life flows along like a song; but the man worthwhile is the one…
You Can Deal with Hard Things Using RAIN
Life throws us a lot of curve balls. I used to just sweep all those difficulties under the carpet and…
Letting Go of Old Stories Part 2
“Just open, relax your heart, forgive, laugh or do anything you want. Just don’t push it back down. It was…
Letting Go of Old Stories Part 1
“A few stories are sinking ships, and many of us go down with these ships even when the lifeboats are…
Meditation Basics
“Training our brain through meditation enables us to make wise choices. When we meditate, we see our stressful thought patterns.…
Cultivating Seeing Clearly
If we get down on ourselves because we have fallen back into running on autopilot, rehashing or being anxious about…
Becoming the Best Version of You
Often people’s biggest regret, when they are dying, is that they did not live true to themselves. They lived up…
My Path to Self-Love
“Here’s what I have learned; self-love is a state of mind where you appreciate, respect and honor yourself. It is…
Strengthening Your Character with Gratitude
“Gratitude is a defiance of sorts, the defiance of kindness in the face of anger, of connection in the face…
Being OK with Not Being OK
“Comfort is not a goal worthy of your effort, have the courage to meet the discomfort in order to stay…
Decalcifying Longheld Beliefs
“Part of the problem is cognitive laziness. Some psychologists point out that we’re mental mixers: we often prefer the ease…
Untangling Your Knots with RAIN
“Rumination is often fueled by feelings of fear, shame, and inadequacy. Because self-compassion directly counters these insecurities, it can help…
Resilience: Tending Your Inner Disturbances
“Resilience is the process of effectively coping with adversity—it’s about bouncing back from difficulties. The great thing about resilience is that…
Practicing with Little Griefs
“Our culture sees grief as a kind of malady: a terrifying, messy emotion that needs to be cleaned up and…
Letting In Love and Kindness
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that…
When There Are Clouds in the Sky, You’ll Get By
“ “Smile though your heart is aching Smile even though it’s breaking When there are clouds in the sky, you’ll…
Limiting Beliefs: The Bars on Your Invisible Cage
“Whether it’s fears or just our ideas about how the world works, baked-in ideas shape how we behave and how…
Turn Up the Volume of Your Inner Nurturer
“You’ve been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.” Thich Nhat…
How Do You Color Your World?
“Perceptions are portraits, not photographs, and their form reveals the artist’s hand every bit as much as it reflects the…
Stoking the Flames of Love and Kindness
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that…
The Cozy Blanket of Self-Compassion
“When you make mistakes or fall short of your expectations, you can throw away that rawhide whip and instead throw…
The Truths Our Body Tells Us
“For starters, being the body is simply telling a truth. What we experience being – thoughts and feelings, memories and…
Is Your Brain Lying to You?
“Your brain is a liar. It makes assumptions not rooted in fact, draws conclusions that are more about fear than any kind…
Beginning (Again and Again)
“Mindfulness is a skill, generated most commonly through meditation, where you learn to see what’s happening in your head right…
Replace Your Shadow Comforts with Joy Snacks
“Here’s an antidote to an ever-stressful, busy, and uncertain world. Try finding and savoring little bites of joy in your…
Exploring Shadow Comforts
“We are so busy trying to be someone else, that we can’t meet our emotional needs. Thus, our wanting self…
Vulnerability: The Foundation of Self-Compassion
“When we practice self-compassion, instead of going with our first instinct when we feel shame to “go small, go silent,…
Cultivating Inner Strengths
“Inner strengths are the supplies you’ve got in your pack as you make your way down the twisting and often hard…
Cultivating Happiness
“True happiness and true power lie in understanding yourself, accepting yourself, having confidence in yourself.” Thich Nhat Hanh If you…
Mindfulness: Shining the Light of Awareness
“Mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different. Enjoying the pleasant without…
Overcoming Fear: The Courage to Be Vulnerable
“Our brains are prediction machines. We are constantly scanning our environment for clues about what will happening next. Fear is…
Gratitude: Your Path to Joy
“All of us live on a continuum between gratitude and feeling grumpy.” David Emerald If you prefer to listen We…
Supercharge with Self-Compassion
“Tender self-compassion allows us to accept the discomfort of an unwanted task and to be nonjudgmental about our desire to…
Finding Your Battery Chargers
“Most of us live our lives as the human equivalent of smartphones running on 10 percent battery power. At any…
Recharging Yourself: Filling Your Hot Air Baloon
What do you do to recharge? If you prefer to listen Even if we let go of our tethers (see…
The Hot Air Balloon of Life
“The key to staying happy is really very simple. Begin by understanding your inner energies. If you look inside, you…
Shining the Light of Awareness
“Mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different. Enjoying the pleasant without…
Getting Unstuck: From Rumination to Investigation
“Connecting to your breath when thoughts or images arise is like spotting a friend in a crowd: You don’t have…
Cultivating Loving Kindness
“True love is like the sun, shining with its own light, and offering that light to everyone.” Thich Nhat Hanh…
Equanimity: Staying Engaged without Being Overwhelmed
“Tis easy enough to be pleasant, when life flows along like a song; but the man worthwhile is the one…
Willingness to Be With Things as They Are
“Mindfulness is like a net that catches proliferating, automatic reactions.” Ajahn Chah If you prefer to listen To develop the…
Resourcing Ourselves
Our negativity bias is exacerbated when we compare our messy insides with the highly polished and carefully curated outsides of…
Our Storytelling Minds
If we are aware of our stories, we can decide whether we want to allow that story to influence our…
Being Right Where We Are
Mindfulness is a state where we are aware, accepting, and as non-judgmental as we can be of “what is” right…
Why Mindfulness
“Simply put, mindfulness is moment-to-moment awareness. It is cultivated by purposefully paying attention to things we ordinarily never give a…
The Gift of Gratitude
May I slow down enough to be aware of and savor all the blessings I currently take for granted in…
Treating Your Inner Critic Like a Bad Habit
“No matter what you name it, if you want to change it, you have to rub your brain’s little orbitofrontal…
Anxiety and Other Habits
“Our brain keeps pulling that worry slot machine lever hoping that it will hit the solution jackpot.” Judson Brewer Much…
Transforming Your Negative Chatter
“Chatter consists of the cyclical negative thoughts and emotions that turn our singular capacity for introspection into a curse rather…
Boundaries: Owning, Implementing and Sabotaging
How many boundaries in your life have you chosen — and how many have you inherited? What boundaries do you…
Boundaries: Defining What They Are
Setting boundaries requires making the journey from the “What will people think world.” to the “I am enough world.” In…
Boundaries: What I Might Need
“If you’re not really clear on what matters to you or what goals you’re working towards, you’re much more susceptible…
Boundaries: The Basics
“If you are a woman who struggles to set boundaries, understand that your difficulty is connected by an invisible thread…
Self-care Is Not Selfish
“Self-care is the deliberate choice you make to maintain your own health and wellness. This includes regularly checking in with…
Mastering Our Minds
“You have to know how your mind works, before you can work with it.” Judson Brewer If you prefer to listen. When we are masters of…
Digging for Your Authentic Self: Navigating Obstacles
“The more clearly we see this unwanted result arising from a repeated behavior, the more disenchanted we become, and the…
Digging for your Authentic Self: Seeing Obstacles
All kinds of things can pull you in the wrong direction. Before we can navigate those obstacles in the path…
Digging for Your Authentic Self: Mapping Your Route
“It is in such small things that we fulfill the lessons of the heart. It is from our intentions that…
Living Fully Mindfully
“Mindfulness is a skill, generated most commonly through meditation, where you learn to see what’s happening in your head right…
Being the Author of Your Life
“Life is so much about the narrative we tell ourselves. It’s so much about how we see our choices and…
Connect, Don’t Divide – You Can Do It
My 5 1/2 year old granddaughter, Sadie made this sign for her front window for the people walking by Translation:…
Making Gratitude Your Attitude
May I slow down enough to be aware of and savor all the blessings I currently take for granted in…
Pleasant, Unpleasant or Neutral
I can look at this picture as pleasant: beautiful fall leaves, unpleasant: raking to do, or neutral: not even noticing…
When There Are Clouds in the Sky, You’ll Get By
“Smile though your heart is aching Smile even though it’s breaking When there are clouds in the sky, you’ll get…
Expanding Your Window of Tolerance
“There are certain moments when you’d be insane to feel content. On the other hand, with practice, we can build up inner shock…
Which Prodigal Child Are You?
“What prison keeps you from experiencing love and compassion? ” Cheri Maples I recently listened to a dharma talk by Cheri…
Well-Wishing: Your Path to Happiness
“Maybe we can glimpse only a tiny sliver of good. But if we can focus on that small piece of…
Being More or Less Mindful
Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am”; but most of the time, the truth is more like “I think, therefore…
Anxiety Can Energize and Focus Us
“Your anxiety provides the essential support you need to think and plan, focus on the future, complete your tasks, and…
Getting Unstuck: From Rumination to Investigation
“As if when we think about it for the 57th time the problem is going to go away.” Kristen Neff…
Being OK With Not Being OK
“When we struggle with discomfort by obsessing why it happened and what we’re going to do about it, we’re feeding…
Resilience: Bouncing Back
“To meditate means to go home to yourself. Then you know how to take care of the things that are…
What’s Your Inner Critic’s Verdict?
“It’s easy to see someone else’s verdict but difficult to recognize one’s own—and so we live within its confines. What…
Cultivating Happiness
“True happiness and true power lie in understanding yourself, accepting yourself, having confidence in yourself.” Thich Nhat Hanh If you…
Bringing Mindfulness into Your Everyday Life
Waking up this morning I smile knowing there are 24 brand new hours before me. I vow to live fully…
Thinking So Much ‘Till You’re Losing Your Mind
“Well don’t ya go thinkin’, and thinkin’, and thinkin’And thinkin’ so much ’till you’re stranded behindDon’t ya go thinkin’, and…
RAINing on Your Anxiety
The pandemic has instilled anxiety in everyone. If you are like me, you will find yourself often getting caught up…
Thoughts: Why We Practice Mindfulness
“With mindfulness, you can stop taking them so seriously. You can come to know that your thoughts make a good…
Mindfulness of Habits
“Simply put, mindfulness is moment-to-moment awareness. It is cultivated by purposefully paying attention to things we ordinarily never give a…
Mindfulness: Shining the Light of Awareness
“Mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different. Enjoying the pleasant without…
Mindful Stress
“You’re really only supposed to feel stressed in the five minutes right before you die. When you are being chased…
My Mindfulness Journey on The Eightfold Path
“But the Buddha’s great contribution to humanity is the assurance that we can all wake up and see things as…
Building Your Gratitude Muscle
May all of us slow down enough to be aware of and savor all the blessings in our lives. If…
Releasing Your Inner Critic’s Grip on You
“This Inner Critic is a voice within each of us that criticizes us mercilessly. With an IQ of about 500…
Unconscious Roles in the Drama of Life
“… drama roles are made-up strategies that the ego creates to manage its anxiety about what it doesn’t like or…
Compassion: When Love Meets Suffering
“Practice love (rather than attachment), compassion (rather than pity), joy (rather than jealousy), and equanimity (rather than indifference).” Jack Kornfield…
Dwelling Places of Our Mind
The four divine abodes or dwelling places of our mind are loving kindness (metta), compassion (karuna), sympathetic joy (mudita), and…
Awareness
Anything outside of your awareness can hook you. So, ask yourself, what am I believing right now? Instead of letting…
Mindfulness and Meditation
Mindfulness teaches us how to live fully and to die well. It does this by helping us to shift from…
Deep Listening
I was fortunate enough to spend a week having deep listening modeled for me at the Mindfulness Meditation Teachers program…