Journal With Me – Nature. A Source of Joy — Even in Dark Times
How are you doing? I know I’ve been extra stressed lately and I’m feeling pretty wiped out. My son is getting ready to go back to college … without going back, for his senior year. I haven’t been able to visit my parents and I miss them. I know many of you are missing...
Use Joy to Get Through Struggles — What?
We’ve been stuck in our separate homes for much longer than we expected to be. Some things are reopening and then closing. The uncertainty about what’s next, when things will get back to normal, what normal looks like … is unsettling. This is a hard time — I want to...
Journal with Me—Habits for Positivity
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” —Aristotle In last week’s blog, I encouraged you to build a habit of positivity, of noticing the good in your day even (or especially) if it was a tough day. Doing so helps change...
How to Get More Joy through Practice and Habits
There’s a saying: What you practice grows stronger. That’s fantastic if what you’re practicing is the violin or tennis or gratitude. The human brain has a strong negativity bias, which was helpful when we were always on the lookout for danger from wild animals. Fear...
Journal with Me—Loving Kindness
Self-compassion is an antidote to self-judgement — that tough inner critic in your head. Self-compassion includes the idea of being kind toward yourself as an imperfect human and also recognizing that you are worthy of care and concern. It’s important to note...
What Happens When You’re Self-Compassionate?
Compassion is a key component of resilience. But often we’re only compassionate to others. When you’re compassionate to others you help them be their better self. But so often we’re kinder to others than we are to ourselves. Instead of compassion, we beat...
Journal with Me—Mid-year reflection
It's easy to look back at the first half of 2020 and see all the things that didn’t happen as you planned, to see one challenge after another. But reflecting on this time might expose something important that you learned, and reflecting on challenges can be revealing...
3 Important Tools that Help Turbocharge Your Journaling
These past few weeks have been tough on all of us. Last week in my free journaling session the participants mentioned how helpful and calming spending time journaling about their lived experience has been. I agree. So I want to share with you some of the tools we use...
Journal With Me: Courage
Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow. — Mary Anne Radmacher Last week I wrote about how small acts of kindness can help us grow our courage. By caring for another through...
How to Build Courage Through Small Acts of Kindness
Right now it’s hard to know how to move forward. The problems facing our nation feel overwhelming. To move forward we’re going to need resources like caring, compassion and especially courage. How do we find our inner strength right now? Nelson Mandela said, “I...
