Fifteen years ago, I rang in 2006 with a group of friends in Chicago. We had tickets to an event that included a four course meal followed by a night of drinking and club-hopping. Early in the second course of our dinner, I started to feel sick. I managed to finish most of my meal […]
I met a beautiful, wise woman yesterday. She told me a story about how it was for her 10 years ago. It was a tough time in her life. She had recently left one habit behind, only to find herself in another. The fallout from her latest habit found her without a driver’s license for […]
Willow is playing a Wickersham in Seussical the Musical Jr. Thursday was opening night; the first of 9 performances she’ll be part of over the next two weeks. This is her third production. She auditioned for this show in mid-August. The cast of 35 kids (ages 5-15) have been rehearsing at lest 6 hours […]
This sweet, wonderful woman I know—I’ll call her Beck—has the funniest dog. Beck describes her childhood as Vietnam. Her home life was unstable, to say the least. She was abused and manipulated. In and out of foster care. Beck never knew what was coming and she never felt safe. I think the world of this […]
Feeling unhappy is a habit. What else could it be? It’s not your nature. It’s not a feature of your conditions or surroundings. It’s not dictated by your DNA. It’s simply where your mind goes. You unknowingly picked it up at some point, the way you unknowingly pick up an accent or a virus. It’s […]
You know what I find amazing? There you are, walking around, living your life, almost never truly realizing just how wise and resilient and shiny and bright you really are. It’s so easy to identify with the part of “you” that you see all the time. It’s like when my kids see the biggest gift […]
In The Little Book of Big Change I refer to home base as that innate, default home within us. It’s our natural set point. The home to which the momentum of life naturally bounces us back. More than “within us”, home base is us. So it goes something like this. We feel stuff—thoughts, feelings, and […]
Do you want a foolproof test of how deeply you see how the human experience really works? Notice your initial reaction to the title of this post. That’s your test. Did you think: “Way to point out the obvious, Amy. Duh.”? Is it crystal clear that there is nothing scary in the world and there […]
There’s a nice woman who is rapidly waking up to the fact that she’s not responsible for every good and productive thing that happens in her life. Even when she doesn’t focus, concentrate, set an intention, or deliberately set a goal, things still happen. Her kids still eat breakfast. She manages to get her car […]
A client just told me about terminal uniqueness. It’s a term used often in Alcoholics Anonymous to refer to the tendency to believe that our particular experience, obstacles, or struggles are unique to us. They are unlike anything anyone else deals with. Of course it looks that way. We see the nuances of our own […]
