Podcast Episode 104: How do I overcome sadness? Once I realize that I am in control of my sadness, I am free to choose whether to keep this emotion or to mitigate it and turn this feeling, this energy, into something more positive.

Continue reading Podcast Episode 104: How do I overcome sadness? Once I realize that I am in control of my sadness, I am free to choose whether to keep this emotion or to mitigate it and turn this feeling, this energy, into something more positive.

Podcast Episode 103: Change your life story: what is the tale you want to construct? Be a hero to yourself and others. This belief is a major part of hopefulness and self-worth. “Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Be a hero in the strife!

Continue reading Podcast Episode 103: Change your life story: what is the tale you want to construct? Be a hero to yourself and others. This belief is a major part of hopefulness and self-worth. “Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Be a hero in the strife!

How should we deal with anger?  

“I would strike you if I were not angry!” is a quote from Seneca attributed to Socrates’ thinking. (1) Anger is an emotion that comes to all of us. That said, how we control it is a very individual undertaking and, ultimately, a difficult journey. All one has to do is go among people in a school, shop, or office to see how many people poorly respond to wrath. The most stunning realization is that anger is far more pernicious to the bearer than it is to the receiver.

Continue reading How should we deal with anger?  

Podcast Episode 101: How does one overcome loss and failure? The simple answer is by never, ever giving up on you! Accept responsibility for the catastrophe and move forward. The only alternative is to succumb to spiritual death.

Continue reading Podcast Episode 101: How does one overcome loss and failure? The simple answer is by never, ever giving up on you! Accept responsibility for the catastrophe and move forward. The only alternative is to succumb to spiritual death.

Goals

The concept of a life goal is an essential element to a healthy and long-lived existence. Many years ago, when I lived in rural Canada, I overheard a man admonishing his young charge about the boy’s future. The father was telling his offspring to forget leaving his village and going to university. What would be the benefit? Here, he could get a union job, (1) make a good living, find a nice girl to marry, and raise a family. What else was life about?

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Family adventures

We all love fire. It brings us warmth and plies us with that calming sense of having beaten nature and the elements. In our family home, we had two wood stoves and a fireplace. In the cold Canadian winter, they gave our family a sense of security and peace. One of my many mandated house-based tasks was to fill up the wood box; it always emanated that inviting, sensuous smell of fir or cedar. This forms a wonderful memory.

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Culture shock: falling out of your “comfort zone.”

I always remember having to stand in front of my class in Grade One to give a presentation on what my father did for work. This experience is still indelible some sixty-plus years later. My memory isseared by two poignant realizations, among others: firstly, speaking publicly is an uncomfortable occurrence and has to be practiced and re-practiced to achieve even a semblance of skill, and secondly, not everyone has a father. In our class, many, those who were mostly poor, didn’t. All-encompassing was a choking sense of shyness; as I began to talk, my throat constricted, and I felt as if I was going to faint. What steadied me was the visceral terror that I had of failure and its concomitant punishments, both at school and at home. This was a time of “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” The relatively modern phenomena of public emotions (think weeping with fear) and of ADHD (1) hadn’t yet been invented.

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To be free, spiritually, emotionally and financially is your birthright.