Category: Awareness

How to Staying Stuck in a Habit, Addiction, or Compulsion

You’d like to be painfully stuck in a habit, addiction, or compulsion?Do you want change that feels like a tenuous, uphill battle?You’re in the right place! I’ve felt stuck in several of my own habits and I’ve talked with thousands of people who say they are stuck in a habit or addiction themselves. I’ve seen

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New Year, Original You

“New Year, New You” is a marketing hook used to sell all sorts of things this month. It’s also one of my least favorite phrases ever.I’m not saying there is anything inherently wrong with it. They are just innocent little words.And I’m not saying there is anything intentionally salesy or manipulative about it. I’m sure

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The Content Blob that is You

I recently heard an actor being interviewed about her process for getting into character. She explained that she creates a history—in her own mind—for the character she needs to become.The movie script points toward some history, of course. But this particular actress goes beyond that. She vividly imagines her character at various moments in her life.

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Horizontal versus Vertical: Which Kind of Change are You Inviting?

It can look like people don’t change. Or at the very least, like they don’t change easily. That’s not true though.We are constantly changing, naturally and effortlessly.  We are wired for change.Our understanding of life is constantly evolving—just look at how radically and naturally your world view and understanding has changed from the time you were

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A Paradigm Shift over 100 Years in the Making (and you have a front row seat)

We are standing at the cusp of a new understanding of the human experience. The field of psychology has always lacked a paradigm of unifying principles.“Hard” sciences like physics and chemistry have laws. There are basic principles—like the laws of motion in physics—that underlie and unify every discovery within those fields.Everything in physics and chemistry makes

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 What Are You Not Seeing?

There’s a common phenomenon among students of this understanding I study and share. We’ve seen some things about life that have been really helpful. We’ve had insights that have made clear what was previously murky. We’ve found relief from suffering at times, and we’ve probably all had the experience of laughing out loud at how seriously

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You Don’t Have to Fix the Past in Order to Have a New Future

The future is completely open, and we are writing it moment to moment.” ~Pema ChodronMy family recently drove from Michigan to North Carolina—twenty hours roundtrip. To entertain themselves, my five-year-old daughter Willow taught my three-year-old son Miller to play rock-paper-scissors in the backseat.Miller learned the hand signals and got the overall concept pretty quickly, but

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Finding A Soft Place to Rest

This article was originally published in July 2016.There’s an inner churning that happens. Or a circling, perhaps. Like a dog circling the rug, looking for a soft place to rest.That circling is what happens when a mind is disturbed. I don’t mean disturbed in any sort of stable or unhealthy way. Disturbed is a temporary experience, not a

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Playing the Game: A Short Story About Willow and Buddha

While I was at the Three Principles Global Community conference last week, and really kind woman stopped me in the lobby. She told me that she loved the story below so much that she was going to include it in her holiday cards this year.Really?! Well, that’s pretty awesome. I told Willow, the star of this

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