“Love to stay and talk, but – wow! – I’m running reeeeeally late – maybe next time!” Ever notice this perverse trend that makes a Badge of Honor out of having no time? Amazing really. Anyone with sufficiently poor organizational skills can pull it off in a snap. Not that this “sorry – gotta rush!” brownie point might ever be recognized for what it really is.  An inability to budget time sufficiently.  An inability to say no. No. Being swamped with obligations and competing interests is, in this particular version of “real life”, a sign of climbing the ladder.  Of becom ..read more

Jeremy Gardner of Body Mind Vortex and I recently sat down to discuss the subject of finding your focus through everyday mindfulness, an approach I have been exploring with my coaching clients over the past few years.  Here’s the video of that conversation.  If you would like to download an audio version of this and other talks, visit the Body Mind Vortex website. The post Everyday Mindfulness: find focus in day-to-day situations appeared first on take your next step ..read more

Has this happened to you? Talking to a friend, you describe a great idea you’ve just had. You’ve got it down in crystalline detail. You know what’s involved, what’s going to happen, and how great you’ll feel when it’s done – even better than you’re feeling right now. Then nothing happens. One thing gets in the way, then another. Your friends’ interest fades. Family stops asking. Bit by bit, you watch with waning interest as your great idea slowly deflates into the sunset … What went wrong? You had a laser-sharp image of what you really, really wanted. You stayed positive – really, really po ..read more

When we experience stress in our lives, our repertoire of actions tend to favor habitual reactions over considered responses.  At the same time, our ways of thinking can narrow. Instead of meeting new challenges with open curiosity, we can increasingly want to get to the point, call a spade a spade, and get over it. When this happens, open-ended inquiries such as “What’s going on?” are replaced by leading questions like “What’s wrong?” In stressful personal relationships, the first – and often only – question that often comes up is short and far from sweet: “What’s wrong w ..read more

Psychologist Neil Fiore is a performance and productivity expert whose book, The Now Habit, focuses on procrastination: its challenges, roots and solutions. In the chapter titled, How to Talk to Yourself, Fiore looks at the kind of motivational language we often use with ourselves and the problems it creates. Early on, he writes: While it is common practice to try to motivate ourselves with statements such as “I have to do it” or “I should do it,” such statements loudly communicate to the mind, “I don’t want to do it, but I must force myself to do it for them.” The inherent self-alienation an ..read more

The notion that each one of us has within ourselves multiple brains may, on first read, sound downright odd. My brain: it’s that thinking gizmo that keeps my ears apart, right? In his book The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt details four completely different brains each of us possess; not all of them residing above the neck. And he follows this up with a second whammy: contrary to Descartes assertion that thinking was his making, contemporary studies suggest that the seat of our true existential horsepower resides well beyond conscious control. “To understand most important ide ..read more

In his book The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secrets & Science of Happiness, Buddhist master and teacher Yongey Mingur Rinpoche tells us in no uncertain terms: “You’re not the limited, anxious person you think you are. Any trained Buddhist teacher can tell you with all the conviction of personal experience that, really, you’re the very heart of compassion, completely aware, and fully capable of achieving the greatest good, not only for yourself, but for everyone and everything you can imagine.” The true nature of the mind, Rinpoche tells us, is immune to the vagaries of the neuronal snipi ..read more

In The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It, health psychologist and lecturer Kelly McGonigal looks at the effects of negative self-talk, anxiety and guilt on our willpower. Stress from these, it turns out, sets us up to crave relief in exactly the activities our bad feelings originate. As McGonigal writes, “Wanting to feel better is a healthy survival mechanism, as built into our human nature as the instinct to flee danger. But where we turn for relief matters. The promise of reward … does not always mean that we will fee ..read more

How to manage our conflicting thoughts, beliefs and goals? The question’s been with us from at least the time of Homer. In tethering Ulysses to his mast so as to hear the song of the Sirens and live to tell the tale, Homer gave us one of our oldest examples of strategic action being taken in the face of an impending willpower meltdown. The idea that our ability to overcome our inner battles is a matter of having the right stuff – the guts, gumption and get-up-and-go to get things done – remains powerful today. How to self-manage?  To follow in Homer’s footsteps: it’s a matter of willpower ..read more

For many of us, one of the more challenging tasks we face comes in communicating constructively with those we care about after they’ve said or done something we find offensive. A trusted colleague who cavalierly blows off a critical business commitment. A close friend who spills personal confidences in front of casual acquaintances. Your spouse booking you for social engagements without checking in first. A family member who broadsides you with blistering character judgments. In situations like these, immediate reactions vary. We might take the “eye for an eye” approach and go for the jugular ..read more