December 5, 2021
If you look behind every strong anti-empathy feeling – fear, anger, rage, frustration, resentment, disappointment, hurt, and hostility – you’ll find beliefs. Beliefs are the activators of feelings – and they drive all of our behaviors and decision-making. Some beliefs are empathy-killers
November 11, 2021
Looking around it’s common to see the signs of an increasingly weary and anxious world. There appears to be little room left for the joys of wonder. Asked to identify the “malaise of the moment,” a prominent New York psychiatrist declared, “Generalized anxiety. That is by far the most common complaint voiced by my clients.” The antidote? Well, that’s a […]
October 18, 2021
No one can harm you , not even your own worst enemy, as much as your own mind untrained. And no one can help you, not even your most loving mother and father, as much as your own mind well-trained. The Buddha Before we begin, let me ask you an important question – what makes your world? I know it’s a […]
October 11, 2021
I’ve often written about the slow death of command and control leadership – envisioning the demise of that mindset as the prevailing force in organizational life. It is slow going – isn’t it? At least it feels that way to me – even as an “observer” in my role as a consultant. The power issue hangs over us. Although there […]
October 10, 2021
“Forgiveness is a lovely idea until you have someone to forgive.” C.S. Lewis I’ve thought a lot about forgiveness lately. Often when we face life’s major passages, a flood of old thoughts and feelings suddenly reappear. But I must admit that I am not at the place where I started when I began to think about the concept of forgiveness for this […]
August 18, 2021
“ “The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition that impels us to unfold our powers.” Erich Fromm, The Search for Meaning Most of us would agree that whatever we do, we cannot predict the future. Yet, many of us spend an inordinate amount of time trying to control the uncontrollable. This is a […]
August 18, 2021
“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.” ― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas Is kindness “compassion in action?” While there are distinctions made between kindness, empathy, compassion and altruism, most people experience kindness as action. With kindness we take our cognitive experience of […]
August 1, 2021
“The beliefs we have about anger and the interpretation we give to the experience are as important to its understanding as anything intrinsic to the emotion itself.” Carol Tavris Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion Anger has been called the “misunderstood emotion.” Why is that? Seems like we know everything there is to know about anger, don’t we? While there still is […]
July 25, 2021
In earlier writings on self-compassion, I asked what I consider to be a core question, Have I loved my life enough? Another way of asking this is – Have I loved myself enough? Either question takes you down the same path.All of life is driven by needs. Needs energize our life, generate motivation and shape the meaning of our experiences. Too […]