February 6, 2024

Events Don’t Have to Control You: Using the E+R=O Formula

“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn how to surf.” Jon Kabat-Zinn   Beware of quick fix formulas! But, there are tools that can help us to manage our reactions to external events that can shift our emotional and behavioral responses. The E + R = O (EVENT + RESPONSE = OUTCOME) formula, which we picked up on […]
November 24, 2016

Talking Emotional Literacy

   “The publication of Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, marked a turning point in popular culture. Finally, emotions were deemed critical to human intelligence. Ironically, the book presents a model of emotional intelligence that is founded in the subordination of emotions to reason.” Miriam Greenspan, Healing Through the Dark Emotions Wine Connoisseurs know that there is a vast array of wines […]
March 17, 2016

Beliefs Keep Your Emotional Baggage Packed

Ever wonder what’s in that bag? By now the term emotional baggage is familiar – but what do we think is in the bag? Surely it’s packed with old hurts, resentments and fears, but unless we go in there and pay some attention to those unwanted feelings – the bag stays full. If we’re not the type that likes or […]
May 22, 2015

Renewing Our Belief in the Power of People

“I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance.” Pablo Casals   The more I see others from my heart and not my judgment, the more compassion I have for my fellow human beings.  Admittedly, this is a work in progress. There’s something poignant about pilots reporting their final passenger count as having a […]
February 26, 2015

Building Resiliency through Emotional Awareness

  Resiliency. The ability to spring back from and successfully adapt to adversity. A return to balance. Emotional Buoyancy. Flexibility. Are we what we feel? While that may be a rhetorical question, there is truth behind it.  Because advancing emotional understanding is a central theme in my work, these pages have often explored many facets of expanding emotional awareness.  First […]
November 1, 2014

Why Worry? ~ the Emotion Series

Worry is a trap. Lately, I’ve been falling into the worry trap too often. I’ve found myself worrying about many things. I worry about ________________. I worry about the ______________. I worry when _________________. I worry about – OK, that’s enough because mental rehearsal is the engine that powers worry. Despite many years of dedicated effort to raise my level of […]
October 10, 2013

Forgiveness at Work – Cleaning our Emotional House

“Forgiveness is a lovely idea until you have someone to forgive.”  C.S. Lewis I’ve thought a lot about forgiveness lately. Often when we face life’s major passages, a flood of old thoughts and feelings suddenly reappear. But I must admit that I am not at the place where I started when I began to think about the concept of forgiveness for this […]
September 19, 2013

Befriending Anger ~ (from the Emotion Series)

“Anger can be a wonderful wake up call to help you to understand what you need and what you value.” Thich Nhat Hah For seven years I regularly facilitated seminars on conflict resolution.  Most of the group participants wanted answers to problems they saw as the source of their conflict. Usually this had to do with fixing the behavior of […]
July 5, 2013

The Voice in Your Head ~ What’s Your Work Narrative? – Reprise

You have a mental dialogue going on in your head that never stops. It just keeps going and going. Have you ever wondered why it talks in there? How does it decide what to say and when to say it? How much of it turns out to be true?                   What’s your workplace narrative – you […]