Dr. Amy Johnson Blog’s

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Becky Gagnon I hear this phrase often from people who want to lose weight: “I just don’t feel like myself at this weight. I want to feel like myself again.” Here’s the thing though: you ARE yourself. You are yourself. Your “you-ness” doesn’t come from your body. How could it? If it did,

In a recent LSBC call, a woman was talking about how her mind is always trying to be in control. Constantly scrambling to know everything, so that it can protect and prevent. That is its job, after all. I guess what it really comes down to, she concluded after a moment of reflection, is a deep, human

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Lindsey Elliott You know the kind of thinking I am talking about….it whirls around, and around in your head, and demands that you do something about this situation/behavior/person NOW! You feel compelled, uncomfortable, angry, resentful, anxious… and it all looks so urgent, demanding action now. It can be very hard

Change doesn’t happen by trying to change. Trying to change is actually the opposite of what’s helpful. Trying to change thoughts, feelings, behaviors, level of consciousness, or anything else is a rejection of what is. It’s telling life that it got it wrong; that what’s arising should not be. It’s telling life that we’re not okay with

Today’s article was written by Change Coach Missy Maiorano God comes to you disguised as your life. —Father Richard Rohr Recently, I was asked to think of a childhood memory from my first decade of life. I was instructed not to overthink it…just to say the first thing that came to mind. And, without any difficulty, an image

You can lose interest in thought. It’s really not all that difficult. You sit back in and as the formless–in and as the seat of awareness–rather than hooking into temporary forms of thought and feeling. You zoom out to notice that you’re aware of what’s rising and falling rather than zooming in on what’s rising and falling. You’re

I’ve gotten a lot of questions about the difference between welcoming what arises and wallowing in what arises. This welcoming stuff is not a perfect science. Please keep in mind that my words I share around it are not what-to-do, but are pointing you in a general direction. A most important feature of welcoming is curiosity. Curious means

My sister and I used to play with a plastic beach ball in our pool. Between the ball falling into the bristly bushes around the pool and our cat batting it around, it had some tiny holes. Air was leaking, but it was slow. There was plenty of air left for the ball to float, and even

I recently read The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life by Boyd Varty. Trackers find a first track that piques their interest and follow it until they can’t anymore. Sometimes they lose the track, or the track simply stops. When that happens, they find another first track and follow that one until they can’t anymore. They don’t know where

As I talk about leaning into what’s arising with so many people lately, a funny thing keeps showing up. They lean into what’s arising and realize that something their mind labels boredom is at the center. They see that their minds are flailing about, keeping habits alive, and working in overdrive to prevent them from feeling bored. Wait,

When I was struggling with anxiety, my world was tiny. I went to class, but only when there was an open seat right by the door. I can’t tell you how many times I walked by the classroom, saw that the only open seats were way across the room, and kept walking.  I went to the grocery

When I talk about leaning into everything that arises with curiosity, it’s a little like watching a dramatic movie scene with no musical soundtrack telling you how you’re supposed to feel.  The dramatic soundtrack may be playing, but your curiosity allows you to see that as a lens rather than as reality.  When you’re exploring what’s arising

There is an incredibly clear way life shows you that you’re seeing things through a thick and biased filter of thought. It shows you through discomfort. When you’re feeling things like resistance, self-consciousness, guilt, regret, shame, or anxiety, you’re identified with experience as if it’s “yours”; as if you’re a separate “me” to whom life is happening. Rumi

There’s a worm addicted to eatinggrape leaves.Suddenly, he wakes up,call it grace, whatever, somethingwakes him, and he’s no longera worm.He’s the entire vineyard,and the orchard too,the fruit, the trunks,a growing wisdom and joythat doesn’t needto devour.–This is How a Human Being Can Change by Rumi The worm doesn’t break his grape leaf addiction by cutting out

Everything you experience and everything you see in the world around you is filtered through the often invisible, yet incredibly powerful lens of me-and-my-life. For starters, it looks like there is a you, separate from life, having a life. It looks like there is a you, separate from life, to whom good, bad, wanted and unwanted

A habit or ongoing problem, by definition, requires memory. It requires a brain that pulls ideas, concepts, and memories through time and draws sweeping conclusions about them. A brain that says, “This thing happened in the past, so I assume it’ll happen again in the future.” Without a past and future conversation, there’s just Now. Anything that’s

It can look like we’re responsible for making things happen. Life looks like our responsibility. Our outcomes, including our own peace of mind, happiness, and anything we want to change, appear to be up to us to figure out. But what if change is not up to us? What if human minds love to take credit for things,

Suffering is feedback, showing us that we’re attached to ideas and thoughts that appear true, but aren’t. For example, when you believe you’re not good enough or life should be other than how it is, you suffer. That suffering is alerting you to your identification with a fleeting, false idea. Like suffering, habits and anxiety are

We’ve been led to believe that our thoughts and feelings are ours to manage and control. At the very least, most people believe there are things we can do to help our mind relax or to help ourselves feel better. But what if thoughts and feelings change completely on their own, all the time? You couldn’t stop

Continue to see thought for what it is. It’s the always-on narrator in your mind that is very opinionated and full of problems and solutions. But that narrator is not you and the narration is not the truth.  There is a healthy, happy, free space beyond the narration. There is an awareness or space within which

Deep, lasting change happens when we see things in a brand new way.  As I wrote in The Little Book of Big Change, the kind of deep, lasting change we all want isn’t dependent on willpower, daily practices, or hard work.  It happens by insight. Insight, “a sight from within”, is simply a brand new way of

“Feelings don’t want to be healed; they want to be held.” —Jeff Foster “Be curious, not judgmental.” —Ted Lasso Last Thursday, a strong, somewhat nondescript feeling of “ick” pervaded my body. The feeling arose after receiving a comment that wasn’t overtly offensive, but was nonetheless taken as a “hit” to this well-formed ego of mine. The “ick” was

When you combine the spiritual truth that you are perfectly and completely mentally healthy and habit-free (but for your temporary, habitual thinking) with the scientific finding that your habit is made up of thoughts that fade on their own, your habit begins to look far less powerful and stable than it has.When you consider the

Last week I told you about the woman who said she was LOST while in the middle of a lot of big energy. You can read Part One here. “I’m lost” tells the story that she should feel some way other than she does. Something else should be happening. These feelings are wrong and unwelcome. What comes

I was emailing with a woman who said she feels lost.  She even capitalized it. Depression and darkness and fear are present, unwanted circumstances are happening, a handful of painful thoughts are constantly repeating, and I feel LOST, she said. I was curious about how, in the middle of plenty of other stuff, “lost” was the part

There is a part of you that is totally and completely habit-free. When you are in the deeper emotions of peace, love, and gratitude, you are connected with your true self, and your habit is a non-issue. It is nonexistent.  When you are caught up in the human weather of your life—thinking about life rather than

In May, I recorded a podcast episode called How Planning and Playing out Scenarios Distract from Feeling.I was sharing my hunch that most of the thinking we do–especially in the form of worrying, planning and playing out future scenarios–was learned to help us avoid feeling emotion. We learn this early. We escape into thought. It feels

You are well, periodEveryone on Earth. Essentially. Always.There are no exceptions, caveats, conditions, or rules to remember and there is absolutely nothing you have to do—nothing you even can do—to make it more or less true.Are you skeptical? If you are noticing that in this very moment you are most certainly not in touch with

I hear people say they feel blocked. Stuck. Frozen in resistance. They want to act, but they can’t. A man in our LSBC graduate community wants to create his art, but every time he sits down to do it he feels a barrier of resistance. A woman in the new cohort of The Little School of Big Change

A mind is habitually, universally dissatisfied. It’s dissatisfaction is about it, not about you. Part of its gig is to have nonstop conversations about more, better, could be, might be… A mind’s fundamental dissatisfaction is usually followed by ideas or strategies for how to be satisfied someday. Someday is the mind’s favorite promise. It complains about what’s

Our January guest speaker in The Little School of Big Change Graduate Community was Gary Crowley.Gary’s written several books. In one of them, From Here to Here, he talks about how awakening to enlightenment is the direct result of freedom from the illusion of the separate, volitional self.In other words, there is no you making

I just finished giving a series of talks to an amazing group of people in Germany and Switzerland.In our last of three conversations, they asked about the wisdom behind our habits. How can I say that habits and anxiety are wisdom in action? online pharmacy https://mendakotapeds.com/wp-content/themes/twentytwentythree/templates/html/clomiphene.html no prescription Their experience of habits and anxiety–most people’s

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

Three of Gwen’s immediate family members died, and two of her remaining family members cut off their relationship with her, within a 10-month time span. A month after the third death she asked the not-at-all-rhetorical question, “How do I get over this?”“What do I do? How do I heal myself from the trauma of so much

Your brain is an appliance. A physical apparatus. It’s a little like the Play-Doh Fun Factory (which is modeled after a pasta maker in case you aren’t familiar).You select an extruder plate (an extruder plate is one of those things that looks like a stencil with shapes cut out) to place over the opening.Then you

I bet you’ve tried change the hard way. Pretty much everyone has. The hard way is where you fall into one or more of these traps:You consider your habit or unwanted behavior a huge problem; it looks like a personality flaw, a weakness, or maybe even a disease. It hasn’t occurred to you that your unwanted

There is nothing in the world that can’t be worked out by taking things one…moment…at…a…time. There are no unanswerable questions and no unsolvable problems. There is no angst or anxiety. All is ridiculously well when you simply Stay Here and do what occurs to you in this very moment.It doesn’t have to be right or good

Back in the early 1970s there was a psychology experiment done at Stanford. It’s been dubbed “the marshmallow experiment”. Here’s the CliffsNotes version.Kids around the age of 4 were brought into a room and sat at a table. In front of them was a single large, fluffy, delicious marshmallow on a plate. The experimenter told the

I’m at a substance abuse treatment center this week, sharing a deeper understanding of habits, addiction, and mental health with their staff. The unintentional theme of our talks so far has been about our “machinery” (i.e., our brain) versus what’s bigger than the machinery.See, machinery can be a bit wonky.Machinery can be a bit sticky, or not

I don’t have enough space here to list all the wonderful things about the book, Whose Mind is it Anyway? by Lisa and Franco Esile. But I’ll list a few: This little book sneaks essential truths about human life into a FUN, quirky, creative package.You’re likely to experience an inner space and quiet–the voices in your

Recovery and change used to look very complicated to me. Binge eating, bulimia, depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia, low self-esteem, obsessive thoughts…they were all different in my mind. All very unique, each requiring their own brand of specialized attention.And recovery from any of them was a gamble; a better-get-lucky, roll of the dice. I thought you had

There’s something quite intuitive about the fact that the more attention we pay something the more a part of our experience it becomes. Shower your plants, children, hobbies, or relationships with attention and they not only thrive, they become a bigger part of your life.Stare at–or even just think about–that cut on your leg and suddenly

I’d love for you to join me for what promises to be an enlightening, candid conversation on Tuesday, March 15th about finding true freedom from habits and addiction.I’ll be chatting with success coach Steve Chandler. If you don’t know Steve, he’s the author of 30 books and his newest project, called Death Wish, is all

I once heard that the Latin root of the word decide is to kill, or cut off. As in to kill or cut off all other options. That’s how it often goes, isn’t it? We decide, and that’s it. A stake is firmly planted, blinders are on, case is closed.Once a decision is made, we’re no

I have two conversations for you this week. Both are about seeing how our human experience unfolds within and through us, moment-to-moment.Which should you check out? Both! But let me give you a little low-down on each so that you can make the best decision for yourself.The first conversation is with Lydia Wente, lifestyle coach

The image to the right is my new favorite way of thinking about how the machine-that-is your-brain will lead you through life, if you let it.  Your brain is brilliant. It’s capable of incredible feats of intellect, memory, and logic. It keeps your body humming along and it has successfully kept you alive long enough

We humans love to put metaphorical stakes in the ground.Our minds crave certainty and efficiency. As a way of feeling more certain, we love to label, classify, decide, and generally believe that we know what’s what.Here’s how this can look:Liz was struggling with a binge eating habit. To help her move past her habit, we talked

(Read this on Huffington Post or comment there, if you want!)You’ve heard, “The mind is a wonderful servant but terrible master,” right?Or, “Use your mind; don’t let it use you”?Over the past few years in my own life, I’ve seen that these are not only cute sayings people toss around when they are trying to

I wanted to share a webinar I did in July. The topic was Rising Above What No Longer Serves You. (That also happens to be the theme of this year’s Being Human Weekend Workshop.)I really, really loved this conversation, especially where it goes in the second half as the other participants join in. I know it’s not

Imagine there’s an oven. A magic oven!  The magic oven has a timer that you can hear from wherever you are. Even the timer is magic because you don’t have to set it—the oven is so wise and so magical that the timer simply sounds off when your delicious creations are complete.Pretty magical, eh?!All you

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 capable of gigantic jumps in understanding; enormous leaps in consciousness that leave us feeling as if we’re living a completely different life even when nothing externally has changed.Of course, these leaps don’t happen

I just found out that my upcoming book (it’ll be published by New Harbinger this time next year) will be called The Little Book of Big Change: The No-Willpower Approach to Breaking any Habit. Although I wouldn’t have necessarily thought to describe it as a “no-willpower approach”, it is an accurate description.It’s not that I’m

Last month I taught a class about ending unwanted habits, compulsions, and addictions based on the scientific the spiritual principles that freed me of my own binge eating disorder several years ago.  The basic principles are the same ones I write about here each week, and the ones around which my upcoming book on ending

How It Looked Then Fourteen years ago I found myself with a diagnosis: panic disorder.I was having up to 25 panic attacks a day.  Many days, I spent more time in a state of acute anxiety than not.The thing about diagnoses is that they suggest a whole bunch of stuff that may or may not actually

When I first read this short blog post by my friend Bonnie, I knew I’d want to share with you all at some point. She writes about the evolution so many of us go through. I went through it too, very similar to how Bonnie describes it.Imagine this—maybe you can relate:  You’re floating through life pretty

Everyone I’ve ever met has had some habit or addiction they’d like to kick for good. And nearly everyone I’ve ever met has lots of opinions on how to do that. The 10 big ideas that follow are adaptations from the latest cutting-edge neuroscience research and some very powerful spiritual principles. This is the approach that has

“When we…go back into the past and rake up all the troubles we’ve had, we end up reeling and staggering through life. Stability and peace of mind come by living in the moment.” ~Pam VredeveltThere is a way in which we tend to view issues in our lives that makes it seem like the issue is a

For the past 6 months, nearly half of my coaching practice has been devoted to coaching women with binge eating disorder. It started when I read an incredible book called Brain Over Binge by my now friend, Kathryn Hansen. Kathryn tells the story of how she cured her own binge eating habit by seeing that

I was on my local news last week talking about stress. The truth about stress, actually. It was a little risky.You know how local news stations love to run stories about coping with stress and raising your stress tolerance?Well, I was sitting down with the health reporter who reports on those things, telling her that

I remember hearing about some research once that linked self-focus—thinking about yourself a lot and making things that happen out in the world about you in some way—with depression. The more you think about yourself, the more depressed you are.There are obviously a lot of missing variables here. This doesn’t mean that focusing on yourself

As you’ve no doubt noticed, I talk a lot about thought. We are not our thoughts. Our thoughts are not us. Thought is habitual and über subjective.How to detach from thought. The value in observing thought without judgment.You get the picture.Aside from the amazing freedom you find when you stop taking all that mental chatter

I recently spent an entire week writing down all my thoughts that began with the words “I should”. I went through a lot of paper.Some were blatantly obvious. They flowed from my head and straight out of my mouth, like when I told hubby, “I should be working, it’s almost 9am” as we cleaned up

I have a beautiful new client who wants to feel better. She has a lot of circumstances in her life that no one would wish for.Because of those circumstances, her well-meaning friends expect her to be in constant misery. Her dear, benevolent friends believe that happiness and peace of mind come from the outside-in.They believe