BLOG

View posts in: Midlife

The Words We Choose

The words we use on a consistent basis can have a dramatic effect on the quality of our lives. Our words, our syntax and the questions we lead with are often habitual. We all have our go-to emotions and reactions and say things like – that’s just how I am.

Except it’s not.

That’s just how you have conditioned yourself to be. While you have likely been influenced heavily by those around you, you are the author. You created your emotional home and the words you habitually use will take you there.

One of my clients, when describing how she felt at work told me “it’s as if I have a target on my back”.

How would that thought make you feel? Anxious? Stressed? Nervous?

How do you act when you feel anxious or stressed? What do you do? How would it effect the work you did? We all are different, but you might not be as thorough, or it might make you defensive or reactive.

View Full Post

Being Willing to be Wrong

Are you willing to be wrong?

I would guess most of us might have some push back with the idea.

Life seems simpler to understand when we have a clearly defined right and wrong or good and bad. It allows us to have filters so we can quickly make sense of things.

But what happens when we pull those filers out of the depths of our brains and examine them?

This weekend (just for fun lol) I identified a few beliefs I had looping somewhere in the back of my brain.

One was something I knew I was not good at.

One was an observation I had made about myself as a parent.

One was a description of who I was as a person.

For years I had seen them as facts. Observations. But not one of them served me or made my life any better – quite the opposite.

I examined what those beliefs had cost me in the past. I saw how they were currently playing out in my day to day.

View Full Post

Do You Like Yourself?

Do you like yourself?

I remember my life as an angsty teenager, and I am pretty sure the answer back then would have been a hard no, accompanied by a long list of reasons why.

But now that I am all grown up, I don’t have problems like that anymore.

Oh wait. Yes I do.

One of my favorites these days is when I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and all I see is this older woman looking back at me. I don’t always recognize her, and there is a moment when I seriously wonder what she is doing in my mirror. I have no idea why I still expect to see my 20 or 30-year-old self.

Hmmmm. Unless it has something to do with the fact that the only pictures of me in our home are of a younger version, usually with great hair and make-up. Seriously, I just had that realization. Wow. (add – find new/old pictures to my list of things to do for next week) But I regress.

View Full Post