The other day at my son’s Hip Hop class some of the other moms were discussing camps they were booking for their children for Summer. Summer?! It’s January. We are still in Winter. I laughed a little at their urgency around needing to get their Summer camps booked now. This event left me with two thoughts… […]
I know most New Year’s articles often start with a note of excitement and anticipation about the new possibilities ahead. I would like to start my first article of 2026 on a more sobering note. You might find it depressing, and yet, I want to invite you to consider that perhaps it’s not. Perhaps it’s the key to your liberation this year.
On the first day back to school from the holiday break, I was talking to the father of one of the kids in my son’s Kindergarten class while we were waiting for them to be dismissed for the day. I asked him how the holidays were for him, and as per usual, I got the response I seem to get a lot from people: “Busy”. How often do you find yourself responding to a question on how you are with the that one word, “busy”?
What was even more interesting, was when I asked this father what he was most excited about in the coming year, he said he didn’t know yet, because he hadn’t had a chance to catch up on emails. He shared that once he has caught up with everything he is behind on, he will have a better sense of what he wants to do this year. And this is how most of us run our lives. When… Then…
We play this endless When… Then… game with ourselves, without recognizing the three most important truths that will set you free from this endless hamster wheel… […]
Usually in January we hear a lot of talk about goals, dreams, aspirations, ways that we are going to be better and do better. This time of year tends to be a time when there is a heavy focus on self-improvement. Although, I will say that this year, I feel like the energy is different. I don’t know if it’s only on my side of the world, or whether you have experienced something similar? And I’m attributing it to all that is occurring in the world at the moment – wars, elections, wildfires. One colleague said what I was thinking. He said, “It feels like it’s the pandemic all over again…”
I will share that that is certainly where my fear-based mind went immediately, because I remember that there were these out-of-control wildfires in Australia at the beginning of 2020 just before the pandemic really hit. And if you are feeling less inspired and excited this January, I want to invite you to be gentle and compassionate with yourself. My sense is that in many ways, we are still recovering from the trauma of the pandemic, and that our nervous systems are constantly bombarded with more things to process. And it’s a lot. It really is.
And this is why I want to discuss the difference between self-improvement and self-growth… […]
My coach recently gifted me a book by Michael Neill called Things I’m Avoiding Doing: A four-week program to overcome procrastination and get shit done. The title of the book is misleading, because it makes it sounds like the focus of the book is to learn how to get over procrastination and get more done. In a world, where we are already overloaded with too much to do, it’s probably not surprising that we are not getting everything done. And yet, when you read the book, you’ll discover that it’s not really about getting more shit done, and that Michael Neill doesn’t believe that procrastination is actually real… […]
The energy in September tends to be similar to that of the start of the year. Once back from Summer break, people now need to recommit to work, and schedules, and often with the start of the new school year, and after having a break, we vow that we will start doing things differently…It’s interesting how I found myself in the first week of September, already wondering how I will get through the rest of September… Perhaps this feels familiar to you too? And yet, often, even when I feel less resourced, I find myself still pushing through. One of the stories running in the background was, “You can’t be tired now. You just came back from a vacation.”… […]
I’m currently listening to Life Loves You by Louise Hay and Robert Holden and in Chapter 3 of the book Robert Holden shares about a talk he once attended on the mind where the presenter posed the question: “Can a flat tire really give you a headache?” The reasoning was that you might complain about getting a flat tire, and you might even feel like you have a serious headache after having to deal with replacing a flat tire, but is it really the flat tire that is giving you the headache? The only way the flat tire can be responsible for your headache, is if the tire came off, bounced, ricocheted, and hit you in the head. What is really giving you the headache when you need to replace a flat tire, is your thinking about the flat tire… […]
A question I love to ask my clients, is: What’s your context to life? This question reveals so much about how someone is relating to their experience of life. A context to life, is the story we tell ourselves about life, about ourselves, and about others. It’s the things we believe to be true about Life, about ourselves, and about other people. For example, someone might believe that Life’s a bitch, and then you die. Or they might believe that life is hard, and only the strong survive. Or they might believe that life is the relentless pursuit of more. Or that life is unfair. Or that life is a gift. Or that life is a journey.
What we tell ourselves about life, determines how we might respond to different situations IN our life. […]
Often this time of year, there are lots of posts on social media about big goals and kicking the year off with a strong start. Many of those messages contain a subtle (or not so subtle) tone of “if you’re not all in and ready to go, there’s something wrong with you”. And yet, you might find yourself in a place where you are not sure you are all ready to go.
These messages are not accurate. Not everyone is excited at the start of a new year. And nor do you need to be, because let’s be honest, New Year’s Day, is just another day in the year, like any other, and nothing significantly changes between one minute before midnight on December 31st and one minute after midnight on January 1st… […]
This past weekend, I led a workshop for 19 people called “Creating 2024 with Intention”. These 19 individuals made the conscious and brave choice to slow down, take stock of what had transpired in their lives in 2023, and really become intentional about who they want to become in 2024 and what experiences they would like to be having this year.
The New Year often evokes within most of us the need to set new year’s resolutions. It’s an invitation to start anew with a clean slate. And it’s been my experience that so often people are so eager to move forward, that they don’t take the time to slow down, turn around, and look back to where they had come from… […]
Last year, at the start of the holiday season, I asked whether you would be inviting the Twin P’s over for dinner this holiday? It seems that many of us – especially women and caregivers – turn in to control freaks during the holiday season. We become frantic and tend to experience a tremendous sense of overwhelm, because we believe it’s our job to create “the perfect holiday celebration” for our family. What that usually looks like, is we want everything to be perfect – whatever that means? – we refuse to ask for or accept help from others, and we become control freaks, so we become impossible to be around. But what if it doesn’t have to be this way? […]