Palo Alto and Bay Area therapist
With the Olympics in full swing, this is a good time to hear from some of the world’s best athletes on what it takes to bounce back in sports and in life.
Adversity, if you allow it to, will fortify you and make you the best you can be. [Read more…] about Bounce Boosters: 5 quotes to help you bounce back in life – the Olympics edition
This above all: to thine own self be true. ~ Polonius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
I get depressed when I stay home by myself too much.
For a long time I thought there was something wrong with me. I wasn’t making the connection between being at home and depression. After all, who doesn’t want to work from home and have all of that time to yourself?
Then I took a course to become a certified practitioner for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI) and I finally got it.
Aha! That’s why I get depressed sometimes when I’m working at home.
I’m an extravert.
I get my energy from being around other people and activities. Although I enjoy working from home most of the time, if I don’t have enough interaction with people, I get drained of energy and ambition and my mood swings toward the low end of the scale.
Here’s why you need to know whether you’re an introvert or an extravert: [Read more…] about Introvert? Extravert? 3 reasons why you need to know
As I’ve been moving rapidly toward the half-century point in my life, I’ve noticed a certain shift in my thinking.
And it’s not that freeing shift that I’ve noticed among many women in their fifties, that ability to say “I don’t care what you think” and take action thereupon with utter ease and confidence.
Although, I have to say, I am looking forward to that.
No, this swaying of thoughts has more to do with one word:
Legacy.
I am so pleased to present this guest post by Nina Sankovitch, author of Tolstoy and the Purple Chair.
Seven years ago my oldest sister died of bile duct cancer, a rare and swiftly-moving cancer. Diagnosed in January, Anne-Marie died in May. The first months after she died were a haze of tears, anger, and despair.
How should I live, now that she was gone?
For three years I answered the question of “how to live” by cramming as much activity into every day that I could: if my sister had to die, I would live double, to make up for what she had lost.
But I still woke up every night crying and I spent every day fighting fatigue. I realized that I had not answered the question of “how to live” but had instead been running as fast as I could away from the reality of my sister’s death and the inevitability of my own.
What to do? [Read more…] about The only answer to sorrow is to live
Don’t you get tired of being told to “just let go”?
Like it’s so easy or something.
But, the truth is that learning to let go of things, ideas, and people is actually a vital part of being able to bounce back in life.
Why?
Because the overarching skill needed for managing adversities both big and small is flexibility.
The opposite of letting go is, of course, hanging on or grasping as Buddhists might say. And that, of course, is not particularly flexible.
But – ugh! – why is letting go so hard? Here are seven reasons:
I’m bookending this month’s resiliency quotes with a bit of boxing lore:
Sometimes grace comes in the form of a punch in the face.
I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot… and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that’s precisely why I succeed.
[Read more…] about Bounce Boosters: 5 quotes to help you bounce back in life
First, a story:
In Ursula K. LeGuin’s classic fantasy novel, A Wizard of Earthsea, one person has power over another by knowing his “true name.” So it is that the people of Earthsea all go by nicknames, only revealing their true names to those they trust with their lives and hearts.
The story is told of a brash young wizard named Ged (his true name), who, in a vain show of his immature power, accidentally unleashes a dark spirit-monster from the depths of the other world. Ged is severely wounded by the creature which then flees into the night.
Upon recovering, Ged finds himself in mortal fear of this creature and, when he again encounters it, runs away and continues to run as the creature follows wherever Ged goes.
Returning to his first great teacher, Ged is told that he must learn the true name of the thing that hunts him in order to defeat it.
“The evil thing, the shadow that hunts me, has no name,” Ged whispers with resignation.
“All things have a name,” his teacher responds with certainty.
Finally, Ged realizes that he must confront the dark creature in order to stop running and return to living a whole life – or die.
Now the hunter becomes the hunted as Ged chases the dark mass, finally catching it in the middle of the sea. Ged approaches the thing and, as it morphs into hideous, ever-changing dark shapes with sharp claws and dagger teeth, Ged reaches for it.
The black spirit hisses and moans but Ged, finally facing the truth, calmly calls it by its true name: [Read more…] about Afraid of the dark? 4 lessons to help you embrace your shadow
You have a problem.
And you keep thinking and thinking about it.
It’s driving you nuts.
To get rid of the thoughts, do you ever find yourself saying something like this:
“If I just don’t think about it, it will go away.”
I’ve got news for you. [Read more…] about Try NOT to think about this: Why stuffing your problems doesn't work