Category: Change

I was talking with my daughter recently and she shared with me that she is teaching my granddaughter about setting and respecting physical space limits.  My daughter didn’t use those specific words, but it is essentially what she was referring to.  It reminded me of the importance of setting clear boundaries with others and the important responsibility of keeping and respecting boundaries of others and of ourselves.  It is good to recognize that we all have limitations and recognizing that and putting healthy boundaries up helps us to thrive.

My granddaughter is learning about a physical boundary, but there are other areas we may want to consider when thinking of boundaries.  Areas that I have learned to value and protect with boundaries include financial, time, energy, and emotional boundaries.  These can change as our circumstances change, but it is good to know what boundary I need or want to be in place for the c ...

Spaghetti and Hurt Feelings

I am a pretty clumsy person. Like a keep-an-eye-on-me-around-closed-sliding-glass-doors, probably-should-never-eat-spaghetti-without-a-full-apron-on kind of person. Suffice it to say, my childhood nickname lauded my propensity to accumulate minor bumps and scrapes through incredible feats of un-coordination. I won’t tell you how old I was when I nearly broke my glasses walking into the corner of a doorway instead of through the doorway - although, to be perfectly clear, it was part of the transparent wall of a racquetball court…and that was the problem: it was perfectly clear.

Anyway, as my luck would have it, I’m also a pretty relationally-clumsy person. At times I completely miss that I have caused emotional discomfort or harm. I put my foot in my mouth routinely enough that I< ...

When you hear the words “mind control”, I’m guessing your thoughts go to things like hypnotists, Sci-Fi movies, and social media among a host of other things. In each of these situations, the idea of mind control is typically something that someone (or something) does to another person. However, I want to consider mind control from a personal standpoint. Is it possible to achieve self-mind control? What would that look like? Is this something to be desired? 

Now, maybe the term “mind control” is a bit extreme to use in this context, but I want to suggest that we can have more control over our own minds than what most of us would normally think. This includes our thoughts and mindsets and, to a certain extent, our moods and emotions as a result. To understand where I’m coming from, it will be helpful to highlight a recent line of research in neuroscience that looks into the wellbeing of our minds. An organization called The Center for He ...