Handling The Hard Stuff

Tag: Self-Help

  • Living with Pain

    Trauma and loss and regret can be so all-consuming. Often times those uncontrollable feelings come up out of nowhere. You think you have a handle on your pain and emotions and all of a sudden you’re ugly crying in the middle of a store because you see a shirt that brings back a memory. You’re…

  • Strike While The Iron Is Hot

    We don’t always have motivation to do things. Energy fluctuates, interest levels fluctuate, time and availability fluctuates. I have spent my life being a champion procrastinator. But lately I’ve been able to make small inroads on that front. I’ve found myself with more energy than usual lately – I don’t know if it’s vitamins or…

  • Fighting Right

    Navigating conflict is one of the biggest challenges in a relationship. You each come with your own baggage and your own interpretations of other people’s statements and perspectives. And you each come with your own personality and sensitivity. That makes turning mole-hills into mountains a really easy thing. I struggle with this in my personal…

  • Low Hanging Fruit

    I find it really easy to get bogged down in the nitty gritty details of things. I want to learn the perfect caloric deficit to lose weight effectively. I want to know the exact amount I should be putting in my retirement to retire early. I pay attention to the minutia so much that I…

  • Neutral

    There are a lot of things we deal with that we consider bad or good, that really aren’t inherently anything. They’re neutral until we give them meaning or a response. For instance, Change is neutral. Some people love change and some people cringe away from it. But change in itself isn’t good or bad. It…

  • Find the Fun

    Adulting isn’t a lot of fun. There’s a lot of responsibility and pressure and mundanity. It doesn’t always have to be this way though. We can balance the boring with the fun. If you’re anything like me, you’ve lost your sparkle at times as you go through the responsible and adult activities of day to…

  • Test your Mettle

    I like my comfort zone. Even when I’m challenging myself, I’m very careful and have a strong sense of self-preservation. I’m not the one you’ll see finishing a race barely able to stand up. I’ll walk way before that. I’m not someone who applies for jobs I only have some of the requirements for. It…

  • You Can’t Control Their Narrative

    Someone mentioned the other day that you can’t control how others see you and somehow that was just mind-blowing to me. I tell my clients this all the time (and wrote about it in an earlier post) – you have to be prepared to be the villain in your former partner’s story. But somehow this…

  • Is it Worth Forcing it?

    I can think of a bunch of times in life when I hit a wall or barrier that made me stop and think about my path. Almost fifteen years ago this week I failed the bar exam. It was my worst nightmare come true. All the time and money I’d spent, the public nature of…

  • Just Start

    It’s hard to do new things. As adults we’re supposed to be knowledgeable. That often translates to us avoiding things outside our comfort zone. Trying something new becomes harder and harder the more we stay in our comfort zone. I assume I am terrible at just about everything. I assume I am mildly capable at…