Simplicity, Note-Taking, and Weight Loss

In addition to the emails about weight loss, anatomy enlargement, and offers from a Nigerian Prince, an interesting email popped into my inbox the other day.  It was from Evernote (a company that makes note-taking software). I’ve never liked Evernote even though I’ve used it for years.  I didn’t use it because it was awesome or spectacular, I only ever used it because it accomplished what I needed slightly better than the other sub-par programs that I had sampled.  To be sure, there are die-hard Evernote fans, and I’ve never been one. Their email to me indicated that they would be making some changes to the version I was using.  Because these changes would require me changing the way I used the program, it was no longer worth it for me.  It was time to move on. Why not use a pen and a pad?  There’s no way to search information quickly or easily when...

What are we entitled to?

As you can imagine, people come in to my office looking for help for specific problems.  As we begin sessions, sometimes clients don’t make progress as quickly as they want.  I often find that the cause of this slow progress is often one (or more) unconscious assumptions. There are a handful of these unconscious assumptions that I tend to see with some frequency.  I’m going to discuss one of them today, which is a sense of entitlement. Entitlement is a word that engenders images of high social class, extreme wealth, and almost limitless opportunity.  Think of royalty or rich and famous personalities. Entitlement is related to a sense of deserving and a rightness to the order of things. “I am in a specific class of people, above or beyond others in specific ways, and therefore “x” is due me.  Of course I’ll get it, it’s my right, I deserve it.” If you can’t identify with this sense of...

Keep On Keeping On

I just finished creating my newest advertisement in the national healthy living magazine Natural Awakenings (you can pick them up free at libraries, health food stores, my office, etc.). Most of my ads have a theme, and not just a logo and a phone number.  This is what the new ad says: — So many of us want change in our lives.  We want (or need) things to be different, we want them to be better. And while it’s true that things can turn out better than we ever imagined, the magic step to getting what we want isn’t what we often think it might be. It isn’t a plane ticket out of here, a mega-million dollar win, or a pill to make us happy again. It’s much quieter and arrives with much less fanfare. The magic step to getting what we want begins with the deep acceptance of our current predicament. It is only after we come to grips with it, facing and accepting...

Violence and the Aftermath

Yesterday, in the evening, at a restaurant at which my family and I regularly visit, a man armed with a machete savaged a half dozen people, and was thereafter extinguished by police gunfire. I probably wouldn’t have known so soon, but as it were, the phone rang, my wife answered, and I could hear crying on the other side. My mother was worried that we might have had a bite to eat there tonight, or somehow been involved as we live in the area. My wife assured her that everything was ok on our side, that we were all accounted for and safe, but upon hearing the news, I honestly felt anything but safe. In my own patterns, I am fiercely protective of my family, and all of my internal alarms bells starting ringing. “This shouldn’t happen here. This is a nice area of town. What does this mean for us? If it could happen there, it could happen anywhere. Anywhere we eat. Anywhere we shop....

A Somewhat Shocking Technique for Embracing Discomfort

A Somewhat Shocking Technique for Embracing Discomfort Last time in this blog post, I discussed how we don’t actually “need” to be comfortable, and in fact, how it often stops us from growing and developing. At the very end of that piece, I said that I would share one technique that I have personally used to overcome the “need” to be comfortable. It’s a technique that has helped me when I needed a simultaneous reset and a push forward. It has broken bad moods, erased lethargy, and even reduced physical pain. This technique has been used throughout history, and throughout various cultures. It is purportedly useful in a number of ways, including the improvement of the immune system, easing depressive symptoms, and even some weight loss. Now, before I mention what this technique actually is, be prepared, for it’s not as exotic or rare as you might...