“O come, O come, Emmanuel, And ransom captive Israel That mourns in lonely exile here…” When Sorrow comes at Christmas time we are often not prepared Grief seems to have no place in the festive Christmas we imagine for ourselves. It contradicts the joy and excitement we associate with this holiday. When I was...
Being assigned a day of honor on a calendar, like so many well-intentioned things a Mother endures, can become a gauntlet of emotions for women who didn’t carry to term, who relinquished their child at birth, who were judged as unfit, who lost a child, who are no longer the guardian, or who are...
Want to be a grownup? Learning the difference between Shame and Guilt is a first step. Being able to name your emotion as you experience it and managing your emotions as they flow through you are two of the six steps of being an emotionally mature person. In other words, doing this work is...
Well being is possible no matter who you are, where you are, or what holiday is about to crash down around us. Since Thanksgiving is here and Christmas is nigh, it’s time to put strategies in place for moving through these experiences well. 2020 has been an especially odd year and depending on your...
Not everyone who grew older grew up, but you can. Being “grown up” is an accumulation of skills, habits, and character traits. Some people get there faster and more easily than others, but no worries, this isn’t a race. We do, however, progress more swiftly if we look to do our personal best as...
Good character is built by being honest, kind, fair, and brave simultaneously. If your character isn’t as grand as you’d like, maybe you have a wrong desire embedded in your heart. These are four desires that commonly derail our good character choices: The desire to be liked The desire to have the most The...
Can having good character be simple? For 35 years it was my business to build or rebuild the good character of my students. For the last 17 years of that time I was the principal of a school and had the deciding power of exactly how my staff and I would do that. But...
Whether we are a Pollyanna or a seasoned pessimist, our assumptions often work against us. Rather than Make No Assumptions, a better description for this third of the Four Agreements might be “Assume Repeatedly, but Never Act on an Assumption Without Further Investigation and/or Clarification”. In the animal kingdom we are vulnerable creatures, and...
The Saga of Domestication We came into this world without words, only senses and intense needs. From these, we formed mild to strong opinions, which were expressed with facial expressions and body language. We smiled or howled, reached out or withdrew. Our vulnerable being was entrusted to the care of grown people who had...
The quality of our human relationships are impacted all the live long day, for good or ill, by the presence or absence of four simple, yet deeply impacting, agreements that were introduced to the world by Don Miguel Ruiz in his book, The Four Agreements. Be Impeccable with Your Word. Don’t Take Anything Personally....