mental health

This past week was rugged for me.  I had a major disappointment and a part of myself I haven’t yet learned to completely love was alive and kicking.

I was reflecting on the dynamic that when we take actions to stretch our comfort zone, and it doesn’t work out as planned (or even when it does) we can get some pretty wicked backlash.

When we choose to love ourselves more, and allow more of our-self to come more alive, the old fears and lessons we learned WILL come up to be loved.

This is why se…

I’ve been walking around lately saying “I’ve got this!”

I’ve been saying this partly because I’m in the midst of creating a new program and I always get scared when I do something new. I’ve also been saying it because winter is coming and I’m a little worried about how I’ll handle the pandemic without the sun. The winter days are dark and short here in Seattle.

But mostly I’m saying it because it feels good, and it helps me feel more motivated to tackle what I’m facing.

The longer I’m on this…

Please watch The Social Dilemma. It will show you why we spend so much time on social media, what it is doing to our thinking, and the resulting social divide.

On a personal note, it helped partially explain to me why my brother-in-law and I, both good people, see the world so differently.

The reason I’m writing this Love Note though, is because the real take-away The Social Dilemma reminded me of, is the importance of learning to trust ourselves instead of our newsfeed.

Part of getting my Ph…

It’s a grey Seattle morning.  I’m drinking coffee and reading “Detox Your Life” by my friend and colleague Rebecca Gould.  I highly recommend you get it.

I can barely sit still because I am reading her section on saying “no.”  I LOVE it!

As a child I learned that “no” was not an ok response.  Around the age of 50, I decided to declare “my year of the bitch.”  I told everyone to expect me to act more bitchy that year.  In reality, I was just going to practice saying no, but that doesn’t have th…

I’m proud to share that I got a piece published in Thrive Global! Arianna Huffington’s new venture. I talk about a pretty dark period in my life, but it ends well. ♥

…

“It was a sunny fall afternoon in 1996. On this particular day I was sitting on my bed reading a self-help book.

And I was thinking of killing myself…” Read more at Thrive Global

Also, my interview on Lisa Zawrotny’s Positively Living Podcast is up! Lisa and I are kindred spirits. In it you will hear my story about how I made …

Welcome to the season of goal setting and self-flagellation!

I stopped setting New Year goals years ago, because I always started off the year feeling like a failure.  I am not alone.

Research has shown that less than 25% of people are still keeping their goals by the end of January.  Worse, only 8% of people achieve their New Year’s goals.

Nevertheless, we are still driven to set big goals, create vision boards, buy gym shoes, and hope for huge changes–because of a day on the calendar.

(Don…

1. Positive emotions fill our brain with dopamine and serotonin.  These chemicals make us feel good and increase our ability to learn.  They help us process new information, keep that information in the brain longer, and remember it faster later on.
2. Feeling happy improves our ability to perform tasks and solve problems.
3. We feel better when we think happy thoughts.  People who are grat…

Have you ever had thoughts that just keep repeating, and repeating…and repeating?

You try to stop them.  You try to distract yourself, yet they just keep looping.

– Nope.  Me neither.  (Oh, how I wish that were true.)

If you are like most (read all) humans, you sometimes have thoughts that just won’t go away.  It happened to me today, which is why I am sitting at my dining room table at 8 o’clock at night, writing this newsletter.

I got triggered and the story started.  It is an old story, o…

1. What to do with fear
2. The super-secret power of imagination
3. Affirmations that actually work!
4. At the very end, a tool to help you be kinder to yourself
5. Are you hard on yourself?
6. Are you afraid of being judged by others?
7. D…