Creating Life Change

Creating Life Changes
by Carol Adrienne, Ph.D.

Despite the fact that we cannot help but change, we seem to have a constant yearning for things to be different in our life. My guess is that this focus on changing something in our life is a corollary of other ideas invisibly current in Western culture. For example, here in the United States, we place a high value on freedom—freedom, I suppose, to make changes when we want to make changes. We also place a high value on having, and having more, whether it is leisure time, money, quality time with the kids, or a bigger house. The desire for change often accompanies the feelings of wanting more of something or less of something else.

For most, the idea of “creating life changes” seems productive and beneficial—maybe even good for the planet. The list of the changes we desire, of course, is endless. Unfortunately, as much as we dream of change, we are just as likely to feel inadequate to the task of making any change, be it changing careers, partners, body weight, or income brackets. This is called resistance, which we’ll talk about in a minute. Read More

New Beginnings
by Alan Seale

What if every single day offered you the opportunity for a completely fresh start to life—a chance to start with a clean slate—no baggage, no expectations, nothing holding you back? The truth is, it does! Every single day, and actually every moment and every breath you take is an opportunity to expand beyond what has been and step into the next moment of possibility. You may absolutely love what has been, or you may have regrets or be facing challenges that make you wonder how things will ever turn around. Regardless of your situation, each breath you take can usher you into new possibility.

The key is choice. You have the opportunity to choose in every moment to free yourself of what was, as fantastic or challenging as it may have been, and step forward into the next moment. You can choose to “shed skin,” in a manner of speaking, as you walk through your day, instantly growing the appropriate “new skin” to meet the next moment, the next opportunity, the next gift of life. Read More

Change
by Barbara Biziou

Trust your ability to handle change. While writing this article, it seems as if everything in my life is undergoing rapid change. To say that things have changed in the past year is a major understatement.

Time is speeding up and we can’t help but encounter fast-paced change on a daily basis. The old and predicable is gone and we have no new map to follow without the tools to help us create one, we often move through life without having any idea of who we are or who we are growing into. We are like a child on his or her first day at school…feeling vulnerable and scared. Read More

Recreate a Charmed Life
by Victoria Moran

Sometimes you have to do it over again.

It can happen like this. You’ve created an extraordinary life. It looks great from the outside and feels wonderful on the inside. All is well. Then everything falls apart (or maybe only one thing but it’s so enormous that it seems like everything). This is the test that separates the charmers from the charlatans. After the fire or the tornado, the death or the divorce, the pink slip or the dreaded diagnosis, just making it through is laudable. Making it through and coming out better—well, that’s charmed-life country.

Nobody wants to start from scratch to redo what’s already been done. It seems so tiring, so “been there, done that.” And yet recreating a charmed life is not an experiment in cloning. It’s building anew, and it deserves the same excitement you’d give to building a summer home in Maine even though you’d already built a winter place in Florida. This second time around has to be its own challenge, its own adventure.  Read More

Change Your Life…Love, or Livelihood
by Suzanne Zoglio, Ph.D.

As a life-balance coach, I’ve witnessed, supported, and written about life changes related to self-management (planning, organizing, budgeting money and time, self-esteem), relationships (setting boundaries, opening the heart, negotiating) and resilience (dealing with loss of any kind). In actuality, creating change usually involves all three, but there is one common denominator: creativity.

If you don’t like how you feel, you’ve got to create new feelings. That means thinking and behaving differently, so you’ll feel different. If you are feeling nervous, you can shift gears to feeling calm by doing things differently. Read More

How to Change by Working on Ourselves
by David Richo, Ph.D.

The heart of any psychological work is addressing, processing, resolving, and integrating the issue at hand. These words form the acronym APRI Italian for: “You open.” As we understand this central and necessary four-part plan to complete our unfinished business, transference and projection, for instance, may not have to kick in so fiercely anymore.

We address a problem when we call it by name. We admit to ourselves what is really going on and our part in it, i.e., we own our behavior and feelings. In addition, we are willing to look at our wounds and how we may have wounded others. We see our issue in a friendly way rather than critically. Thereby we coax it to reveal more about itself. This means staring into an experience rather than rushing past it, glossing over it, or minimizing its impact. For instance, we admit that we have a drinking problem or a problem with anger. We acknowledge that our partner does not excite us because we are actually attracted to people of our own gender. We put our cards on the table. We let the truth come out and remain open to feelings in ourselves and others. Read More

Creating Life Change
by Robin L. Silverman

I once attended a workshop led by a psychologist who wanted to teach us why people have trouble making changes. He asked each of us to choose a partner and look at what our partner was wearing. Once we had memorized this, we were to turn around and make five changes to our own appearance. The audience immediately started removing external things like blazers, sweaters, shoes, socks, belts, watches, earrings, glasses and hats.

Next, the facilitator asked us to make 10 more changes to our appearance. At this point, many of the men in the room sat down, and so did some of the women. Finally, in what seemed like a ridiculous request, he asked us to make 15 more changes to our appearance. In less than one minute, no one was left standing.“I didn’t tell you to take off your clothes,” he said. “I said to make changes to your appearance.” He walked over to one of the men and held out his own watch. “Want to swap for a few minutes?” Then he went to the podium and picked up a piece of paper. “Voila! Another change to my appearance,” he announced. Read More

Being Change Changes Everything
by Donna Henes

It is so darn easy to feel depressed, frustrated and disillusioned right now. These are terrible times of artificial division, manipulated resentment and palpable fear. The real dynamic being played out right now is not about warring religious, economic or nationalistic factions. Not even about war. The struggle is actually between those who believe that the world is defined in terms of opposition — war or peace, right or wrong, rich or poor, with us or against us — and those who are able to see things in a more holistic, congruent manner.

In these deciding times, it is imperative for those of us who see the big picture to decide, to commit, to make a concerted effort to reach out in ever-expanding circles of affinity and embrace. Now is the time to create healthy, functioning networks in recognition and in honor of our mutual state of being and our common fate. Read More…

Change is Good
by Sandra Lee Schubert

Hold on things are about to change. I mean it. The world is moving so fast–today cannot guarantee tomorrow. It is like a roller coaster at the local fair, you think you know what the ride will bring, but then you get on and it takes you for the ride of your life.

There is both fear and excitement in change but it depends how it happens. If you have been working hard in school and finally graduate then that is a fun kind of excitement.

But if you are a hard worker and discover that your carefully crafted career trajectory has been sidelined by a layoff; then that is something that is going to inspire fear.

No matter how carefully you plan change the results can be unexpected. Read More

Fresh Starts
by Wayne Hatford

A fresh start is the equivalent of being fully present in the NOW. We literally make a fresh start each time we take a breath. As a matter of fact, every breath is both a re-birth and an opportunity for us to see what’s up. The “fresh start” point of power is the realization that each inhalation gives us an opportunity to examine what is currently going on in our lives. Breath is an awakener. Just one inhalation/exhalation cycle may be all that’s needed to catch ourselves in action, causing us to reflect on what we are doing and why. By continually checking-in, we’re able to make more informed decisions and, as a consequence, effect mid-course corrections. Read More