change therapy

if you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. thanks for visiting!“. . . is it safe to say that we can “make” a person feel a certain way? Are we not in control of our own emotions . . ? If I gave you constructive criticism and you cried […]

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jeff’s comments on my last post about gratitude about open hearts reminded me of something very beautiful that alice walker, one of my favourite authors (the temple of my familiar is one of my all-time favourite books), once said in an interview with sharon salzberg for shambala sun, a buddhist magazine:
“You know, what are hearts […]

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gratitude is a funny thing. i used to find it incredibly hard to be grateful for things that people expected me to be grateful for. i would just be resentful. that doesn’t really happen anymore; i suspect it’s mostly because i have weeded from my life most of the people who want […]

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(the following entry is a retreat of something i posted back in january. when i transferred my blog over from blogger, for some reason none of the material from january made it over here. so i’ll post some of the posts anew.)
a while ago i skulked around the internet again, using wordtracker to […]

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the other day i received an email from a friend. it started with the ominous “please read and pass on”. immediately my antennae went up; in my experience, 95% of such emails turn out to be hoaxes.
the friend of mine who passed the email on to me is an ex teacher, has an […]

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back in the 90s, i spent a few years teaching a weekly meditation class at our local YWCA. it was at 5:00 pm, so i had to drive through thick traffic right into the hub of downtown.
one day i felt i had not meditated enough myself to present a good meditation class, but there […]

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is it the sugar, or the buzz that comes after a few glasses, or the hit of the booze right at the first swallow, or is it the taste, the burn in the throat? or the smell, the neat line-up of bottles at the liquor store? the memory of great parties, the memory […]

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lots of blogs have memes, so i thought i’d put one up, too. why don’t you answer or comment on a few (or all) of these questions. or feel free to propagate them on your own blog. let’s see what happens …

how do our eating habits relate to world hunger?

addthis_url […]

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july 20, 2006
dear friends -
wow, it’s almost august already!  i wonder how many you are on vacation right now, enjoying a change of pace, a change of environment, and hopefully lots of relaxation …
the older i get, the more i appreciate the rhythm that carries me through the years.  this time of year often has […]

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i finally moved my blog over to wordpress! i’m so happy! can we have a celebration? how do you have a celebration on a blog? any ideas?
as you can see, all of my previous posts (minus the ones from january, for some strange reason) have been imported from my old blog.
let […]

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continuing on from yesterday’s blog, here is the rest of steve pavlina’s (edited) words on goal setting
goal setting is an activity
setting clear goals is not a passive act. you must take direct conscious action. everything counts, and nothing is neutral. you are either moving towards your goals, or away from them.
if you do nothing or […]

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lately, i’ve been following steve pavlina’s blog. he’s got some pretty strong things to say about personal development. below is a somewhat shortened and edited excerpt of what he says about goal setting and decision making.
bunker hunt, a man who rose from a bankrupt cotton farmer in the 1930s to a multi-billionaire when […]

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when we feel we don’t have enough support, of course there’s many ways we can “go out and get more”. however, often, when we have a problem like this, it’s not because we lack the know-how – it’s that there is something blocking us from reaching for what we need.
when we don’t get the support […]

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today i thought i’d share with you a handout from a workshop i gave a little while ago on social support:
this is part 1 - part 2 is tomorrow.
social support
there’s the quality of supportive relationships – what type of relationships are they and how satisfied are we with them?
then there’s the quantity – how many […]

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last month i reported on yves magloe, a tenured professor at pasadena city college, who was let go because of a mental illness. as many of you know, it is extremely rare of a tenured professor to let go of - tenure usually means lifetime employment.
well, good news. hugo schwyzer reports that professor […]

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