Living Your Dreams
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” –Eleanor Roosevelt The Circle: How The Power Of A Single Wish Can Change Your Life by Laura Day I’d like to invite you to make one single wish, the one change you want more than anything else in the world. You can make others after this one comes true. Your wish can be anything, “realistic” or not, as long as it is the one thing that you hunger for when you wake up and go to sleep yearning. Perhaps that wish is for that thing that you envy in others. Make your wish and write it down before you read the rest of this article. Keep this wish in your heart as you read on. We will work more on it later. You are going to use your own inner resources in The Circle to grant yourself this wish. How many times have you started diets over the holidays or greeted the first of the year with an overwhelming exercise program and a list of New Years resolutions. Huge, seismic, self imposed (mostly punishing) changes rarely work. They overwhelm too many different parts of us. These solutions deny the hunger and need, the insecurities and experiences that created the problem in the first place. Read More… Making Your Dreams Come True by Carol Adrienne, Ph.D. Gregg Brown, a training consultant in Vancouver, British Columbia, is living in the dream condominium overlooking the Pacific Ocean that he once thought was out of his price range. More than a year ago, Gregg saw a listing for a beautiful...
Mindfulness
“To the quiet mind all things are possible.” –Meister Eckart You Are Not Your Mind by Eckhart Tolle The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some super-human accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being. It is a state of connectedness with something immeasurable and indestructible, something that, almost paradoxically, is essentially you and yet is much greater than you. It is finding your true nature beyond name and form. The inability to feel this connectedness gives rise to the illusion of separation, from yourself and from the world around you. You then perceive yourself, consciously or unconsciously, as an isolated fragment. Fear arises, and conflict within and without becomes the norm. I love the Buddha’s simple definition of enlightenment as “the end of suffering.” There is nothing superhuman in that, is there? Of course, as a definition, it is incomplete. It only tells you what enlightenment is not: no suffering. But what’s left when there is no more suffering? The Buddha is silent on that, and his silence implies that you’ll have to find out for yourself. He uses a negative definition so that the mind cannot make it into something to believe in or into a superhuman accomplishment, a goal that is impossible for you to attain. Despite this precaution, the majority of Buddhists still believe that enlightenment is for the Buddha, not for them, at least not in this lifetime. Read More Learning to Stay by Pema Chödrön As a species, we should never underestimate our low tolerance for discomfort. To...
Letting Go
“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the life that is waiting for us.” –Joseph Campbell Let Go or Get Dragged by Lama Surya Das A friend of mine named Eva, who manages a Buddhist retreat center in the mountains of Switzerland, has a yellow sticky hanging above her mouse pad as a reminder. It says: “Let go or get dragged.” That about sums it up for me. I have been thinking a lot lately about acceptance, and how it actually changes things. For example: have you ever noticed how hard it is to change your mate, while a little more acceptance goes a long way towards transforming your relationship? Ultimately, I can change myself; that is about as far as it goes, although the ripple effect definitely filters further outwards. In a deeper sense, transforming myself transforms the world. Read More… Letting Go and Living Well by Father Paul Keenan Wherever I go, people are concerned about something they refer to as “letting go.” Sometimes they are contemplating the letting go of a marriage. At other times, they are struggling to rid themselves of an addiction or a bad habit. Often the “letting go” is emotional — a grudge, a painful set of memories or a neurosis that needs to be weeded from the garden of the spirit. Still others are experiencing the “empty nest” — children growing up and going away to make their mark in the world. In an odd twist of fate, many older parents are wishing they could let go, as their adult children...
Your Authentic Self
“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart.” –Carl Jung Authenticity by Carol Adrienne, Ph.D. As children we have no trouble being authentic. Remember when you woke up in the summer happy with anticipation for the day? Remember the joy you took in having your friends sleep over? Remember your parents’ mixed reaction when you blurted out some delightful, albeit disconcerting, blunt truth? Growing up, we naturally question authority or the status quo because curiosity and the need to understand how the world works are prime motivations in our developing psyche. At some critical point, however, it is inevitably driven home to us that in order to get along in the world, sometimes we need to withhold our opinions, listen to our elders, deny what we see and hear, lie low or even lie. We begin the process of putting a lot of stuff—beliefs, opinions, self-criticisms, pain, fear, disappointments, humiliations, anger, rage, feelings of distrust and abandonment in a closet—with the idea that maybe it will go away or we’ll sort it out later. Making a Break. Each of us is born into a family or a situation that already has a code and a belief system that works to some degree. For those of us who are adventurous enough—or unhappy enough—to search for personal fulfillment, we may find we are attracted to interests, cultures, lifestyles, or beliefs that don’t jibe with past conditioning. Read More… Living Full–Living True: The Authentic Life by Suzanne Zoglio, Ph.D. In the early stages of life we are often focused on pleasing others…parents, teachers, bosses, and spouses. In an...
Moving Forward
“Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” –Goethe Moving On…To What You Want by Suzanne Zoglio, Ph.D. Whether life hands you a bucket of stuff that you’re anxious to get rid of, or you find yourself sitting on life’s sidelines but longing for something more, the dilemma is the same. How do we get the push we need to move on? It’s that old approach-avoidance thing that keeps us stuck. Our hearts say, “Go,” but our feet won’t move. Our friends say, “Move” and we dig in our heels. One foot firmly placed in what we know; the other poised to take us to what we truly desire. It all seems so simple, intellectually. We want something different, so why don’t we just move forward with all the gusto we can muster? As a psychologist and coach specializing in life transitions, I have seen two primary roadblocks to moving on: resistance and fear. Read More How to Do Hard Things by Suzanne Falter-Barns One of the harsh little realities of pursuing a dream is that sooner or later, you’re going to have to do some stuff you don’t like very much. It’s just plain inevitable. Enter procrastination. Dread. Meltdown. Complete inertia. But the prospect of doing the tough stuff doesn’t have to stop you cold. To that end, I’ve been teasing out some different ways you can keep going. Here are a few of my favorites. Read More Becoming New by Bonnie Gold Bell You have powerful tools for making progress right in your own hands—and your...Our Sponsor
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