It means making an assumption or hypothesis and testing its validity through objective analysis.
How accurate is my thinking? How can I prove or disprove that? Can my thoughts be modified or expanded? What are the underlying beliefs?
Unchallenged, our first automatic thoughts to potential catastrophes can keep us in a fear, anxiety, or panic mode.
Challenging our thoughts allows us to get out of highly charged emotions while affirming our ability to be flexible, roll with the punches and believe in ourselves. Read on…
Imagine not being able to experience the joy of holding your baby, or that feeling of confidence over a job well done, or the excitement you feel cheering your favorite sports team. Life would be dull and robotic if it weren’t for those wonderful moments of joy and excitement and contentment.
Every day we experience emotions enabling us to enjoy life.
Emotions help us respond appropriately. They warn us of danger as well as bringing us incredible joy. But it’s not situations themselves that create our responses so much as it is our interpretations of what is happening.
I invite you to try the exercise in today’s post. It will help you identify patterns of emotional thinking and responses that might be working against you.
After surgery to fuse my lower back, I was required to wear a brace for three months. During that time, I walked every day, up to two miles a day to help heal and strengthen my back.
We understand that it takes time to recover from broken bones or surgeries, and that the healing process requires physical therapy.
It takes time to recover from emotional and spiritual wounds, as well. Making that transition to a new life is never straightforward – there will be ups and downs and sometimes detours. Click to continue reading, or to listen to to the audio recording of this post.
Life is a dance – a process – that requires flexibility while we learn how to change position and location and still maintain our balance.
Life is movement – we are going somewhere.
Life is never static – never the same but constantly changing and evolving. We can learn the music of life; we can adjust our movements and take charge of change and our responses to it or simply be swept along with no direction or purpose.
To experience freedom and create meaning in our lives, we must let go of the past while taking control of the present and future. In this blog post and podcast episode, I’ll help you understand what “letting go” and “taking control” mean, and how problems, tragedies, and losses can help you.
When transitioning from a loss, you need to build a bridge from your ending to a new beginning.
You can’t go back and glue the pieces of your life together again. But you can pick up the pieces you need and find a new way to connect them.
In this week’s blog post and podcast episode, you’ll get tips for building that bridge to a new beginning.
I’ll show you how to choose responses that move you forward, and I’ll ask five questions that will help you gain a better understanding of yourself, your abilities and possibilities.
We leave something of ourselves behind in our endings as we reach forward to a new beginning.
When endings are not adequately completed, it will be difficult to make a successful new beginning. We no longer feel pleasure or satisfaction in the things we used to do, and we get discouraged and disheartened with this uncertainty. We wonder, Can I have a meaningful life again?
When leaving one world to move towards another, we go through a transitional period. In this article and podcast episode, I’ll show you six ways to effectively use reflection during a transition.
Change is ongoing throughout life. We will experience many ups and downs, bumps and bruises, most of which we take for granted.
It is when we encounter major upheavals and setbacks that it takes longer to get back on our feet. At those times we have the opportunity to reflect on what is working and what is not and explore new ways to improve our life and make our goals happen.
This month, we have been reflecting on how current habits can either help or hinder us.
Going through tough times can be discouraging. You find yourself becoming more and more critical of yourself and others. While each day offers an opportunity to work towards new solutions, our self-talk can become a major stumbling block.
When negative thoughts and self-imposed judgments are constantly repeated, they become an ongoing internal dialogue, like a recording set on auto-replay.
This recording only contains our failures, the times we have been disappointed or rejected. I call this on-going recording your “internal critic.”
Hard times bring up old memories; unpleasant or discouraging flashbacks from our youth.
There may have been traumatic times earlier in your adult life. Presumptions about who you believed you could become have been shaken. You might hear your parent admonishing you for not getting better grades or fighting with your siblings, unfair comparisons with a sister or brother or scolding for disobeying.
At such moments, we question ourselves.
Am I really that incompetent? Those old messages can erode any confidence you are gaining.
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