Handling The Hard Stuff

Category: Personal Development

  • You Don’t Have to Be Whole to Shine

    Even at funerals people smile and laugh. In the throes of the worst divorce cases, I’ve watched clients find moments of happiness. It is ok – and incredibly important – to find good moments even in the midst of awfulness. The longer we live life, the more likely we are to have dents and scars…

  • Loneliness

    It’s the time of year when the weather makes a lot of us unmotivated to do anything other than hunker down at home. We also don’t see the sun and don’t have a lot of daylight to look forward to and it’s when we’re more likely to feel deep loneliness and isolation. It’s hard to…

  • Mental Energy

    I came across the phrase “Our brain serves back our most practiced thoughts” and it just struck me. We hear so often that practicing gratitude can help with mental health overall. I have a hard time with that. It gets a bit too touchy-feely for me. However, if I analyze where my mental energy goes,…

  • Everyday Isn’t a Thrive Day

    We all have good days and bad. Life has its ups and downs. Sometimes we are thriving – all the pieces fall into place and we get things done and feel good about ourselves and our contributions in the world. And some days we’re just holding on for dear life trying to make it through…

  • Financial Hierarchy

    Money can be a lot of things. It can be scary or confusing, it can be freeing or limiting. It can create stability and confidence. It can generate feelings of guilt or greed or shame or envy. For me, money is a path to freedom of time. Budgets and debts and monthly payments take up…

  • Set Appropriate Goals

    We are all so tempted to dream big in the new year. We make vision boards and set big, bold, ambitious goals for things we wish to do or accomplish in the next 365 days. I am not a New Year Resolution person. I sometimes come up with a theme or a guiding approach I…

  • Forgive Yourself

    So much of what we do when we are young follows us into adulthood. Decisions we make about schooling, working, relationships, and how we solve problems as young adults has ripple effects that we end of dealing with for the rest of our lives. As an older adult the consequences of your young-self’s decisions can…

  • Find Enough

    We live in a world of hustle culture. We need more, we need to climb the corporate ladder, we need to have our kids in all the best activities and schools, we need to join all the right clubs and participate in all the things, and we need to make all the meals homemade, and…

  • People are Rooting for You

    It’s hard to trust when you’ve had family, friends, and relationships that have let you down. We develop lots of baggage and chips off of our heart that leave us more fragile than we once were. We assume that people are secretly speaking ill of us or we assume that we are a burden or…

  • Be Honest with Yourself

    This time of year we all seem to find ourselves reflecting on the year that’s ending and setting big goals for the year to come. I always have these ambitious plans that I’ll then end up ignoring or sabotaging somewhere along the way. Admitting the sabotage is the thing that gets me. We all have…