“Life doesn’t happen to you – it happens for you”

You are not a victim of fate or circumstances.

Lessons will be repeated until learned.

PemaChodron

In my psychotherapy practice, people often present with superficial problems, as if to distract from the deeper issues. I can see it in their faces – the way they avoid eye contact. I wouldn’t even say it’s a conscious defense- mechanism.  So I ask the deeper questions: “Why?  What would that give you?”  

The answers often surprise my clients.

“Well… I want my family to respect me”. .. And what do you imagine that would give you?  “Validation”.   And what would that give you? … “A sense that my life is worth something.”

That way we are getting somewhere – the underlying, often unknown, motives that drive their actions. 

By making it conscious, we then have choices – Choices about the authenticity of the goal; the strategies employed that haven’t worked, and an opportunity to re-strategize to make the goal achievable.

“Life doesn’t happen to you – it happens for you”  ~ Jim Carey

Love and caring will always lead the way – fear gets in the way of becoming what people most desire. If I can help a person realize this, I can help them create the life they were meant to have – one with passion, with exuberance, one that feels vital and real!

Helping people to NOT suffer has become my obsession. I know it’s possible. That’s why I love my work.

We Are Always Evolving

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April Peerless

 

I love these words…

because people have a tendency to see others’ as static beings.

It’s not personal. It’s how the brain processes the environment. It observes, then compares the new information with what it already (thinks it) knows.

But people are NOT static. We evolve constantly. We are not consistent. We don’t have the same opinion about a thing tomorrow that we had yesterday. 

I think this is liberating news – for the self and our thoughts about others. Here is what Gandhi says about writing in a journal:

“At times of writing I never think what I have said before. My aim is not to be consistent with my previous statements on a given question, but to be consistent with truth as it may present itself to me at a given moment. The result has been that I have grown from truth to truth.” 

–Mahatma Gandhi

Allow yourself to be inconsistent! Allow yourself to explore, and re-explore, your views about life. And remember to offer the same compassion to others.

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