What Speaking Kindly to Humans Can Do
There Are a Gazillion Little Ways to Be Kind (and It Benefits You Too)
“The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands.” ~Robert M. Pirsig
One day while grocery shopping I was reaching for a head of lettuce when I heard a shrill, high-pitched wail from a few aisles over. It sent shivers up my spine. It was one of those sounds that grabs your breath and pulls it to your heart.
It brought me back to a time I had long forgotten—a memory engrained in my brain from about twenty-two years ago when my children were toddlers. I remember those days of being exhausted and …
To Reduce Stress, Stop Globalizing and Put Things in Perspective
“I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.” ~Mark Twain
Life happens. And sometimes when life happens, we can get pretty stressed out. I’ve found that the way we view situations can either reduce our stress or make it worse. Here is just one way we aggravate situations, possibly unnecessarily, and how we can adjust our perspective to keep stress in check.
A colleague of mine claims that he is “calendar-challenged.” He is often unable to attend meetings at the last minute or shows up late. I am, by contrast, a planner. I live …
How to Start Dating from a Place of Self-Love
“You must learn to love yourself before you can love someone else.” ~Sonja Mylin
It’s tough being out there.
I remember myself some years ago embracing the world of online dating. Everyone kept telling me “be yourself” (and I kept telling myself that), but when I was actually on a date, “myself” would fly out the window.
I’d go hard on the impressing, second-guess myself, drink too much, look for every little thing we had in common (even if the person did not feel right), feel devastated if I was rejected, and utterly lose sight of what I was …
8 Things I Learned from Watching My Mum Die
“Pain changes your life forever. But so does healing from it.” ~Kayil York
In 2012 my mum got diagnosed with cancer. After an operation, she was cancer-free for some time when in March 2017 it was discovered that the cancer had returned and had spread everywhere, notably to her lungs.
She was adamant that she did not want further treatment, which would have been palliative at best anyway and would have had significant side effects. Nobody was able to make a prognosis regarding how much longer she had left. Being seventy, there was a chance that it would develop slowly.…
We All Need to Define “Success” for Ourselves
“There’s no such thing as what you ‘should’ be doing with your life.” –Lori Deschene
How often have you thought about what success means to you?
If you’re anything like my younger self, that would be almost never. It’s not that I didn’t want to be successful. It’s just that it wasn’t something I’d given much thought to. No one ever asked me about it or even encouraged me to think about success. I’d just absorbed it from the people and culture around me, watching how they lived and what was important to them.
From what I saw around …
A Simple Practice to Help You Appreciate How Wonderful You Are
“Stop criticizing yourself for everything you aren’t and start appreciating yourself for everything you are.” ~Unknown
Are you your own best friend, your own worst critic, or somewhere in between? Do you tend to focus on what you see as your flaws, mistakes, and imperfections, comparing yourself to others you think are better than you? Sometimes, do you even wish you were someone else?
It’s easy to get trapped in that way of thinking, especially in today’s consumer culture. From magazine ads to TV commercials, we are trained to compare ourselves to others and are subtly told we are not …
Why I Got Caught Up in the Drama of an On-and-Off Relationship
“One reason people resist change is because they focus on what they have to give up instead of what they have to gain.” ~Rick Godwin
Dave and I met earlier this January. I was immediately attracted to his aquamarine eyes and his tattoos. I met him on the eve of my twenty-sixth birthday and, based on our interaction, I assumed we’d have a casual fling. Things didn’t end that simply, to my surprise.
When we were lying in bed together that first night, holding hands, he turned to me and asked if there was any chance we could get to …
How Journaling Helped Me Heal from Grief and How It Can Help You Too
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” ~C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
The day I was told that the man I loved was going to die from cancer, I did two things: I made a pact with myself never to have more than one bottle of wine in the house. I knew the risks of numbing pain and I knew that it didn’t work. Then I went to a stationery shop and bought a supply of fine moleskin journals.
My journey through grief started the day the pea-sized lump behind my husband’s ear was given a …
“You’re Too Sensitive” Is a Lie
“I used to dislike being sensitive. I thought it made me weak. But take away that single trait, and you take away the very essence of who I am. You take away my conscience, my ability to empathize, my intuition, my creativity, my deep appreciation of the little things, my vivid inner life, my keen awareness of others pain and my passion for it all. ~Unknown
My phone rang and it was my boyfriend. I slipped out into the hall. “Hey you,” I answered. We’d been texting about getting together that night.
“Why don’t you just come over to my …
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