As a species, humans love control. We want to control our environment, physical and emotional safety, financial security, and self-image. Yet this same passion for control gets us into trouble as individuals and as a species. If we do not exercise wisdom, control can easily become addiction, tyranny, and repression. We find ourselves rebelling against...
Changing our thoughts can be as easy as A, B, C. And that's the key to creating a different set of experiences that leads to the different life many of us deserve. One of my favorite ideas from A Course in Miracles is...
On the one hand, being free of heart depends on our ability to engage all our feelings. On the other hand, being free of mind requires letting go in a way that keeps emptying us of the residue of our experience. Otherwise, that residue can block our perception...
As long as people are determined to cling to their preconceived opinions, mistaking them for Truth and refusing to consider dispassionately the positions of others, they can neither escape hostility nor arrive at blessedness.
Self-care includes a healthy dose of humor. If you’re not laughing every day, it’s time to start. Laughter creates powerful chemicals in the brain that act quickly to reduce stress and tension and lower blood pressure...
The pain from the past that people experience often follows them to their deaths. I had been visiting Vince weekly for five months, and every week he began by telling me about his distaste for his brother, whom he hadn’t spoken to in twenty years. His animosity had to do with a...
Is there a resentment that lives inside of you? When we first started our counseling practice, a woman came to us that had been raped. We asked her to try forgiveness and compassion. She looked at us like we were crazy. One month later...
We can upgrade all kinds of old patterns and situations in a much shorter time than it took to create them. Before we can do that, however, we have to let go of the notion that healing takes a long time, is hard, and requires pain...
Our concepts of ideal and perfect are always changing. The evaluations and judgments we make unconsciously in every second of our lives that jump-start our emotions and bring us much anxiety and stress....
In the West, we place our cemeteries away from our everyday lives, as if there were an impermeable barrier separating life and death. We pretend that death will go away if we just ignore it. We know that this isn't true, but...
Everything we do is a habit, in one form or another -- how we think, how we talk, how we react to criticism, which type of snack we instinctively reach for. Even when faced with a circumstance for the first time, we respond to it from habit...
The end of this year might be a good time to decide which stories you want to leave behind and which you would like to take into the new year and amplify. Some stories are worth telling and others are not worth telling. Some stories empower us and others disempower us...
A disappointment can really be a blessing in disguise. We had an experience of this recently while returning home from our three week work trip in Europe. I admit, I have a big thing about seats on the airplane. Sitting next to Barry is the most important thing for me. I also like to have an aisle seat. Sometimes...
“Live in the moment!” bumper stickers cry. “Live in the now!” self-help books declare. Movies like The Bucket List preach the importance of living life in all its fullness before your time on earth is up. And yet, “being in the now” is easier said than done, right?
To become a VIP member of Club Shouldsville, you must constantly suffer from the belief that one "should" and "should not" say and do certain things in relationships. And since reality almost never lives up to most people's expectations and ideas about how...
Letting go of clutter is more than tossing stuff—it’s an emotional journey of self-kindness and permission to begin again.
I encourage you to realize that the most powerful thing you can do in every moment is to choose joy. Make the shift into joy your greatest priority. When you choose joy, your joy is a flint that creates a spark that ignites the fire of unconditional love that subsequently...
Mediation is appropriate in cases of miscommunication or misunderstandings, to clear up hurt feelings and hurtful interactions. Mediation implies that we can find a win-win solution, that no one is either completely right or completely wrong and that both parties can come to share a mutual purpose.
I recently painted a deck on my house. I enjoy painting, a meditation in being present that doesn’t require much thought but lots of attention. Your hands may get dirty but your mind will stay clean. With just a few planks left to color I noticed I was almost out of paint...
Complaining draws attention away from all the good things that unfold. It's as if complaint puts a mask over our sight: too busy identifying what is wrong, all the things that are right march on by. While there are so many motivations behind complaining...
What if the things you hate most about your current situation are your greatest blessings in disguise? What if everything that’s ever unfolded in your entire life has been the precisely necessary thing to bring you to this mysteriously perfect moment? If that...
September 2026 begins at a powerful turning point as eclipse season winds down and...
Letting go of the past doesn’t mean forgetting what happened. It means releasing the...
How much of yesterday are you still carrying today?
In a world of swipes, matches, texts and disappearing conversations, sometimes the most...
Some temptations don't announce themselves as trouble. They arrive softly, offering...
What if the rules women grew up with were never really rules at all? The Invisible Cage...
What does freedom mean when the nearest emergency room is forty miles away? “Forty Miles...
Fears about the future often stem from past experiences, leading to...
A strong relationship thrives on unconditional surrender, trust, and a commitment to...
Why do we keep doing things we know aren't good for us? The answer may have less to do...
You already know you're tired. You've known it since you hit snooze for the third time...
The concept of hell has evolved significantly from ancient Greek and Roman literature to...