February 6, 2024

Events Don’t Have to Control You: Using the E+R=O Formula

“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn how to surf.” Jon Kabat-Zinn   Beware of quick fix formulas! But, there are tools that can help us to manage our reactions to external events that can shift our emotional and behavioral responses. The E + R = O (EVENT + RESPONSE = OUTCOME) formula, which we picked up on […]
August 1, 2021

Beyond Anger Management – You and Your Anger

“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 […]
February 21, 2021

What is an Intentional Workplace?

  What is an Intentional Workplace?  We may have to use our imagination more than our experience in trying to answer this question. The dictionary defines intentional as:  done with intention or on purpose. Not many people have had the experience of working in environments that operate intentionally or “consciously.”  You know – the kind of organization, team or workplace […]
April 26, 2020

The Self-Aware Leader

  My Google search for leadership turned up 499,000,000 results. It’s a well-covered topic with every nook and cranny explored.  What more is there to say? There is general agreement that leadership models are changing dramatically. But to be sure, the old command and control leadership paradigm is still at work. There’s more talk than ever about We cultures, but […]
September 1, 2019

Cynicism – The Price We All Pay

“Cynicism is an unproductive reaction to disappointment. It springs from the helplessness people feel when they are disappointed by others and allow themselves to become detached observers rather than active participants.”     Jamie & Maren Showkeir  Have you become a cynic?  If so, you’ve got plenty of company. Some might call this the era of cynicism. Some might even say, that’s […]
July 19, 2019

Reflections on the "Busy" Trap

The habit of looking to the future and thinking that the whole meaning of the present lies in what it will bring forth is a pernicious one. There can be no value in the whole unless there is value in the parts. BERTRAND RUSSELL, Conquest of Happiness Way…back in 2012 Tim Kreiders’ New York Times article, The Busy Trap,  generated a lot […]
July 8, 2019

What Do You REALLY Want? 9 Steps to Achieving Better Outcomes

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where -” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat Working with clients we often find the question – what do you really […]
January 13, 2018

The Language We Use in the Workplace

         What role does the language we use to describe our work play in our emotional life and behavior?  Words are not experience, but words shape experience.  The language we use is a reflection of our dominant thinking patterns, as individuals and as a culture.  Language frames our structure for experience. How much of the language we […]
January 1, 2018

The 8 Enablers of JOY

When was the last time you experienced joy? To answer the question it helps to remember what joy feels like in your body. Like all other emotions, joy has its own unique biological signature. We memorize emotions in our bodies.  With those emotions we experience less often, we may have to work a little harder to recall how they felt.  […]