A friend on social media is not like the real-life person sitting or standing next to us whom we hold dear or otherwise important. True connections aren’t made at a distance. As I walk past the floor-to-ceiling windows of restaurants and coffee shops, I see people perusing their phone instead of interacting with the person across from them. Because the phone is easy to become intimate with as it doesn’t take any real work. It is gratification on demand spiked [...]
For sure, it’s one of the oldest and often practiced ego defense mechanisms. Denial is synonymous with refusal – that is, refusal to square our beliefs with truths we won’t accept. “He was so lucky to get that job, I’d be a far better choice.” (But he got it, didn’t he?) “She only won because of low voter turnout.” (But she won, and how do we control voter turnout anyway?) Denial is about more than just refusal though, it’s also [...]
Worry happens when we focus too much on outcomes instead of process when it comes to doing or accomplishing something. It can emanate from general pessimism, a lack of confidence, past failures that were never resolved or concern with things outside of our control. To clear your deck of worry, do the following: Get a stack of post-it notes. Grab a note and write this: “I am absolutely exaggerating the number of monsters under my bed and the extent to [...]
Remember those home movies or photos of you learning how to walk ? You’d probably just turned age 1 or so, and you had no patience for just sitting around waiting to come of age -- having fully figured out how to go about strutting your stuff across the room. Instead, there you were on the floor trying it out, getting up with the help of a chair or sofa, stumbling your way to your first fall… then another… and [...]
We’re generally pretty good at finding people, things or circumstances to point to as demons when something isn’t working out so well. In the end though, the one who usually lets us down is the image staring back at us in the mirror. Whether it our reticence to commit, our inability to trust our true abilities, or an unwillingness to take the next important but challenging step; it’s the internal storyline we’re feeding ourselves that we ought to be calling [...]
Fear of failure is one of the most key reasons – if not the most key reason – for why we procrastinate, sell ourselves false promises, quit a project or just simply don’t show up for duty. Continuing to push through the fear can be quite the challenge. Fear of success though is at least as big a challenge as fear of failure, because vanquishing the fear may mean that our efforts start working – generating tangible results which will [...]
If you’re intent on creating something from scratch, launching some new effort, or for that matter, making something better than it already is, there’s going to be disappointment at first. This is because the challenges associated with getting started or up to speed are bound to be dissatisfying – when compared to what the project will eventually look like. The dissatisfaction is hard or all but impossible to ignore, so use it as a catalyst to keep forging ahead to [...]
It’s true, we reap what we sow. Time and effort we invest is returned to us, with interest – although rates vary. If we practice a difficult piano piece 5 minutes a day, we’ll get better. If we spend the same amount of time per day dramatizing our life, feeling unhappy, entangled in fear and anxiety, we’ll get better at doing so. The habits, activities and behaviors we cultivate define who we are. Something repeated and repeated grows –for better [...]
By nature, I tend to reflect a lot about my life - what’s working, what’s not, how much energy and focus I’m going to devote to A,B or C. I especially like to know what’s influencing my success. Two factors came to mind, which I’ll share here: The first is the need for a support system. I believe this about support: You can survive without it, but it will be difficult to thrive. I say this because it is very [...]
Decision-making… daunting, to say the least for many, if not most of us. The thing is, we often have an answer or a solution, but we vacillate because we just might be missing something – and that something is the optimal choice for solving a problem, improving a relationship or launching a new initiative, for example. Approaching decision-making in this way is essentially an offshoot of perfection, so we stall, lying in wait for some sort of revelation or maybe [...]
