Even My Car Judges Me, Or, How Apps Help Turn Your Most Valued Goals Into Action

 

   Photo by Judith Tutin

My car often lets me know I have excellent study driving. It also often admonishes me to use hybrid system indicator to improve. Recently, my car did not scold me, which is when I realized I had finally achieved hybrid excellence, a 90 on the eco score. That’s when I realized that I actually care about my car’s judgment.

 Why is my car’s declaration so important? It’s precisely the point. We are a competitive people. I want to do better, even than myself. I see the message and I try to improve next time. Read more here...

Six Steps To A Decluttered Home

Despite recent evidence suggesting that a cluttered desk leads to a creative (not cluttered) mind, I'm determined to declutter. It's difficult to be creative when you can't find your ideas buried in piles of articles, legal pads, and journals, or elsewhere on tiny scraps of paper and sticky notes. Not that you could tell by looking, but I prefer the aesthetic of a neat, organized workspace.

Maintaining a clean and organized space doesn't have to be a multiple-hour ordeal that ends with a sore body. The secret lies in creating a simplified routine that works best for you and avoids overwhelming you.

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Could Pickleball Be Your Happiness Hack?

 

 Photo by Aleksander Saks on Unsplash

When an announcement for a beginner’s pickleball class appeared in my inbox I wondered if it might be just the opportunity I needed. It could be a chance to replace the casual social connections I’d lost during covid, when my yoga and running buddies fell by the wayside for various reasons. The absence of those social connections created a happiness and well-being deficit. The conversations we have, sharing little snippets of life, sometimes over the course of years, don’t seem like much, until they’re gone. This is especially true if, like me, you work from home.

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How To Get Your Daily Dose Of Awe

On my travels one day, I saw a skunk. Not one dead by the side of the road. Not one scurrying in the dark. It was a medium sized guy ambling across a campus road just after dawn. There were no other cars or people, so I had the opportunity to stop and watch. It had a clean and shiny coat. It didn’t seem to have a care in the word, pausing to sniff, then moving on. Also sharing this space with me were some squirrels, deer and geese.

It's hard to describe what I felt. Wonder. Peace. Community. Part of a larger world that included all these other beings. It all adds up to awe.

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What You Need To Know About Lying to Your Therapist

 

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Clearly seeing reality is a waystation toward the goal of enhancing your wellbeing. As you might imagine, lying to your therapist impairs both your and your therapist’s ability to see that reality. If you’re like most people, you’ve probably lied to your therapist.

In their book, Secrets and Lies in Psychotherapy, the authors report that between 84 and 93% of clients lie to their therapists, often about multiple things. This isn’t terribly surprising since research has shown that the average person lies once or twice a day.

Consider your honesty on a first date. Odds are, you may be less than totally truthful. You may paint your job in a more positive light, talk about relationships with your children in a slightly more glowing way, or tell an anecdote about something, embellishing the details to make it more humorous or interesting. 

These are all normal lies told for the sake of impression management, to make us look a little better, appear somewhat more accomplished or take a conversation from merely interesting to scintillating.

Read more here…

Before Offering Advice To Adult Children Consider This One Question

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels

 

When I decided to marry at the ripe old age of 19, I did not seek my parents’ advice. They thought it was a terrible idea (spoiler alert: they were right) but they did not let on. Had they, I would not have listened. And I would have been angry. I knew what I was doing.

At a certain age, we all become experts. We have advice for friends, co-workers, acquaintances, and, of course, our adult children. Whether married, divorced, remarried or never-married, we believe we know what everyone else should do on these matters, and myriad others, from work, to end-of-life choices.

Do we have a crystal ball in which we can see the future? I think not. Do we believe we’re right? Yes, we do. Are we right? That’s open to debate. 

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Buy Less and Use More? Explorations in Changing our Consumption Patterns

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Underuse and overbuying lead to too much stuff. Understanding why you buy and contemplating changes in your behavior is the road to change. 

 Did you know The Princess of Wales wore a rented gown to a gala in 2022? It was an event focusing on solutions to pressing environmental concerns and attendees were asked to focus on sustainability in attire, but she’s not alone.

Cate Blanchette opted to re-wear only, i.e., no new outfits, at a film festival in 2020.

In 2019, Jane Fonda vowed not to buy any more clothes.

The average garment is worn only about seven times. Americans typically buy at least one clothing item a week (yes, a week!). Some of us can even find things we’ve had for years with the tags still on, or garments we’ve worn only once or twice. Most of us have $7000 of unused stuff. I wasn’t able to verify the origin of this last figure, but look around you. It makes sense doesn’t it?

The Jane Fonda pledge stuck in my mind even though, like the Princess and Cate, I’m quite sure they all have more, and more expensive, clothes in their closets than I. Yet, when I look in my closets and drawers, if I’m completely honest, I do not need more.

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What Makes A Marriage Work Long-Term?

In "25 Experts Explain What Choices Make A Marriage Actually Work Long-Term," you'll find suggestions for making your relationship be the best it can be. My recommendation is:

Always make new memories. Communicate, compromise and connect. 

Talking and listening lead to essential compromise on the changes that inevitably occur as the years go by. 

Connect by doing things together, creating new memories, and you keep things fresh!

Read more here...

 

What Can You Do About Ageism? Play By Your Own Rules

Photo by Vlad Sargu on Unsplash

Take charge and do things that create wellbeing regardless of your age.

While minding my own business, reading a book review on-line, up pops an ad, “Finally, A Great Lipstick For The Mature Woman.” Later, on a weather app, “Trendy Dresses for Older Women.” Google, as always, was minding my business.

It’s not just the internet pointing out your age, it’s other people. From the physician telling you after a fall that hiking is something to reconsider, to the endless griping about the gerontocracy in our government, people tell us we’re old and there’s stuff we just shouldn’t be doing anymore.

These rules about the dos and don’ts of aging have effects. Ageism abounds and so does its negative impact on your health. It can literally shorten your life.

If you believe the ageism messages saying you can no longer do certain things and be a meaningful member of society, it’s the self-fulfilling prophecy on steroids. The self-fulfilling prophecy is the idea that when you think something is going to happen, then it’s pretty easy to alter your behavior to align with that belief—Oh, I’m too old to learn a language? No point trying to learn Italian.

In fact, research has shown that, as we age, we tend to experience higher levels of wellbeing, greater satisfaction with life and even more emotional stability.  

Continue reading here...

Before Your Emotions Get The Best Of You, Take A Moment And Just Breathe

 

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Try a mindfulness strategy to improve self-control under stress.

You know that person, the one that always challenges your self-control? It might be a colleague you see occasionally at meetings, a friend of a friend, or a relative you only see at holidays.

How about those difficult situations, like getting a late charge because you forgot to pay a bill? Situations like that also tax our self-control abilities. Yeah, like that unexpected tax bill.

Yet another precursor of self-control problems is cumulative stress—you slept poorly, ate poorly, worked 12 hours straight and, just as you’re getting ready to shut work down for the day, the message arrives from your boss—Aargh, you are not seriously asking me to do one more thing today, are you?

That person and those situations are why you need mindfulness-based coping strategies.

According to Jon Kabat-Zin, “mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally.” Using mindful strategies in the face of stressors, like that person, you can behave in a controlled, thoughtful manner.

Having a mindful coping strategy, along with a couple of basic steps to improve self-control, can slow the burn, avoid the meltdown and help with a speedy recovery.

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Want to Move Forward in your Life? Shift your Focus from ‘Why’ to ‘What Now’

 Where you decide to go next is far more important than how you got here.

Photo by Magda Ehlers from Pexels

There are innumerable issues that bring people to therapy and coaching. Folks usually want to feel happier, more confident, less angry, and the like. Before diving into making changes to improve their situation, answers to the “why” questions are frequently top of mind, as in:

Why do I get so angry with strangers, or procrastinate on important projects, or turn a positive moment into waiting for the other shoe to drop?

Much as I hate to admit it, those questions often can’t be answered definitively, even after weeks, months and sometimes years of exploration. How would we know if we did get the “right” answer to the source of your anger issues, procrastination or worrying?

A closely related set of “why” questions pertain to the motivations of others. We can spend hours investigating why your wife cheated on you, why your daughter drinks too much or why [your question here].

The thing is, not much is certain when it comes to what motivates us. For a variety of reasons, we can’t even answer the “why” question about ourselves (e.g., Why did I think it was a good idea to go to law school because two years in I’m bored to death?) much less about someone else.

Why, you ask (hahaha)?

Consider how you might answer a question about yourself now, vs how you answered it one or two years ago, vs how you might answer it two years from now. As the end-of-history illusion demonstrates, our understanding changes over time, as do our narratives about our lives, even though this is very difficult to imagine.

Continue reading here... 

Need Some Hope in the New Year?

Anne Lamott provides nuggets of hope for most of life’s most persistent worries.Almost Everything: Notes on Hope, by Anne Lamott, is a truly enjoyable read, or listen, which is how I experienced it. With her wry humor, wit and references to so many things that matter, it is fun and inspiring. Whether on dieting, sobriety, friendship or family, Lamott’s hopeful view shines through. There’s nothing Pollyannaish about her take on life—it comes across as sincere and authentic.

I may be prejudiced since she talks about issues I too have spoken of, but not nearly as eloquently or delightfully as she does.

A few examples so you can decide whether it’s worth the investment—or just borrow it from your local library:

1.  Chapter 4 is just one sentence which simply says:

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.

You can see what I’ve had to say about self-care which includes unplugging here.

2. In Chapter 5, “Don't Let Them Get You to Hate. Them,” she relates wisdom from her pastor:

When my pastor calls the most difficult, annoying people in her life her grace-builders, I want to jump out the window. I am so not there yet, but I understand what she’s talking about. 

3. Chapter 6 is about writing and in one of my favs, she says:

If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should've behaved better.

And so Karma goes.

4. Chapter 11 is all about food, dieting and the like. Of course I would love the anecdote in which she mentioned to her therapist she was going on a diet and the therapist says cheerfully:

Oh, that’s great honey, how much weight are you hoping to gain?

Lamott goes on to say:

No one talks to me that way. I got rid of her sorry ass. Well okay, maybe not then. It was10 years later.

Got to love a woman who can take the cold, hard truth from her shrink.

Happy New Year!

Eulogy For My Post-Divorce Cat

The loss of a pet yields a unique type of grief.

Some people’s, post-divorce acquisition is a home, other’s a car, but since I got the house and did not need a new car, mine was a cat. It’s a rite of passage for the newly single, perhaps the first time they have made a major purchase solo. Or, as in my case, the first time in a long time.

The cat was not really a solo acquisition. It was my son and me. It was the first big thing we did together post-divorce that was just the two of us.

Eighteen and a half years ago we drove to a double-wide in a slightly more rural area than ours, too close to the city to be country, but too far and wild to be suburban. It felt like an adventure.

She was a beautiful, tiny kitten billed as Siamese, which the mother clearly was, the father clearly not. It was one of those situations where, you’ve come this far, can you walk away kittenless? Of course not. I did not point out that Eulogy For My Post-Divorce Cat

she was obviously only half Siamese. Truth be told, I was a little afraid to question the sellers who didn’t look like they were too interested in bargaining.

Though this was to be a sweet, shared experience, half-way home she peed on my son and he asked if we could take her back. I said essentially that there was no way I was going back there and was quite sure we were not getting our money back.

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The Quest to Mindfully Engage with the Moment

Learning to let go of each moment in order to be fully present in this moment is key to mindfulness.

 Being present in the moment is a mindfulness essential. Unless you've willfully ignored 15 years of health and wellness articles, you know that research shows that mindfulness meditation improves health and wellbeing in a variety of ways (e.g., it reduces anxiety, depression and blood pressure). The jury is in: Cultivating mindfulness makes a lot of sense.

To be in this moment, you must release all those moments that came before. This idea of letting go of each moment before the present moment, which, by the way, is now past, is one of those persnickety meditation conundrums.

How do you let go of those moments? While it's easy to let go of a neutral moment, perhaps a thought about what you want to have for dinner, you must also let go of positive moments. That's not to say that you should not savor your successes—you absolutely must. But not when you're trying to focus on the present. Wins are a lot easier to release.

The most challenging to release are those moments with a negative tone. Maybe it's a memory of why you chose one path instead of another, or something as small as why you said one thing instead of another. Our mistakes, missteps and other misses tend to be very sticky. We seem to have a paradoxical need to hang onto them.

Continue reading here... 

Coping with Anxiety is Not One Size Fits All

Whether your anxiety predates the pandemic or not, the solution is unique to you.

Photo by Tom Fisk from Pexels

During the pandemic I learned I am an ambivert. It was the A.Word.A.Day, word of the day one day and it fits. Neither introvert nor extravert, ambiverts, according Anu Garg, have qualities of both.

It brings to mind something I’ve been pondering during this pandemic—the notion that one size does not fit all, whether in clothing or people. Be it those one-size-fits-all running hats, how introverted you are, how you cope with your anxiety or how you grieve a loss, we are all different and we need and want different things.

My head is simply too small for those alleged one-size-fits-all hats. I am, as I mentioned, neither intro- nor extravert—it depends on the situation and my mood. I like to run to reduce anxiety, a passion not everyone can relate to for coping. I grieve quietly, privately, unobtrusively, and can still feel the pain years later as it if were yesterday, clearly not a mode of grieving that works for everyone.

Back to the pandemic, some of my clients and friends have been more anxious during the past year. Some previously quite anxious are, oddly, less anxious—the true introverts, I suspect. They do not mind working remotely, the absence of dinners out with friends or not having parties to attend.

Read more here...

 

How Many Therapists Does It Take To Change A Lightbulb?

One—it takes one therapist to change a lightbulb. But it really has to want to change.

In these trying times, when we’re all trying to control anxiety and depression about the state of the world, learning to change how you react is a process. My yoga practice helps keep me grounded in how to learn, something we adults often lose sight of.

When you embark on a yoga practice like Ashtanga, you must have an intention to master the poses, breath and flow.

Fully committing to the practice is essential for progress. It’s not that it has to be done daily. It’s more that you practice on some type of regular basis with the goal of being all in.

Experimentation is required. Does it work better this way, or that way?

It’s not about comparing yourself to others. It’s about comparing yourself to yourself. Wow! I couldn’t do this when I started.

You don’t want to phone it in. Even if it’s a crappy day and you can’t do half of what you did just two days ago. You want to be present and mindful.

These principles of learning (intention to achieve mastery, commitment to regular practice, willingness to experiment, being fully present and mindful) relate to a lot of things in life. I think they relate directly to the process of change.

If you want to change your reactions to anxiety-provoking or depressing situations, you must follow these principles as you would to learn anything. And, of course, you really have to want to change.

 

Am I Allowed to Have Post-Pandemic Complaints?

 Because I have not experienced the bone-crushing losses due to COVID that many have, I hate to complain about how it will be post-pandemic. Nevertheless, as we are possibly just emerging from the thick of it, I'm going to give myself the grace I've been telling others to give themselves and go ahead and complain.

Last week we went to Gibbs Gardens, a lovely, wooded spot in Ball Ground, Georgia—no, I'm not kidding about that name. You can see from my photos that it is indeed a beautiful place.

The day was intentionally selected to avoid crowds. And it was not crowded. I shudder to think about what it's like on the weekend with more people, more kids, more noise. I'm sure it's still amazing, just not as amazing. Especially these days.

There were singles, couples and small groups of people. You know how you tend to stop and cluster together to talk when you're with a bunch of people? Well, that happened. As I'm approaching one of these groups I'm starting to wonder, do I need to put my mask on?

Were I not vaccinated this could be one of those two out of three situations ((1) outdoors and (2) distanced, but not (3) masked, since said group was unmasked) in which you don't need a mask. 

 Read more here...

Bring Your COVID-19 Coping Skills Forward Into The New Year

 

There’s considerable research in psychology to suggest that after a trauma we can come back stronger than before. We can become more resilient. Tragedy can trigger the development of new coping skills.

This is the case with the coronavirus pandemic.

Now is the time to notice any positive habits you've developed and decide to keep them moving into 2021. No one expects the virus to vanish on January 1^st, but we're edging closer, so deciding on your intentions post-virus can help you maintain those healthy routines.

Here are some examples:

People are exercising and getting outside more. A combination of not having much to do and wanting to get out of the house yielded a huge crop of new walkers, runners and cyclists. Like seesaw dieters, it could be a situation where once things return to their new normal, the newly fit ditch their new habits. This need not be the case. Once you have established the habit, you simply need to recognize that, as life changes, you may have to tweak the schedule or location. Remember, the habit change made you feel better. In the future, with no pandemic, it is still likely to make you feel better.

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'Hamilton' Has Become the Score of My Global Pandemic

Photo by Sudan Ouyang on Unsplash

The pandemic thus far has dealt me one unexpected disappointment: the postponement of Hamilton in Atlanta. 

Live performance is something we often experience as uplifting and renewing. Another balm unavailable to us during the COVID crisis.

In no way am I suggesting that this is a big deal. I have mercifully been spared a variety of painful decisions, tragedies and heartbreaks, but the musical has become a touchstone for me.

 The proverbial opportunity to turn lemons into lemonade appeared when I was able to watch Hamilton, with millions of others, as Disney started streaming the original cast production. It was a remarkable opportunity to see an amazing ensemble and the play itself is simply mesmerizing.

Since my month of streaming had not yet expired, I started listening to it while cleaning my house. 

I'd have to say, and being a clinical psychologist, I’m qualified to say, things started to get a little obsessive. As you might guess, paying someone to clean my house means I really don't like cleaning. Nevertheless, I've lately been looking forward to cleaning because it's become my Hamilton time. 

I sing along, even though I've been told I should stick to my day job. I dance; no one has to tell me to stick to my day job. I'm tempted to bound into rooms at the end of my workday belting out, So what've I missed?, as if I'm Jefferson returning from Paris. 

 

Read the rest here...

How To Keep Calm And Carry On Despite COVID-19 Concerns

One of the (many) atypical things about COVID-19, is that the people helping you cope are experiencing and coping with the same thing, at the same time. Whatever your profession, you’re probably also a parent, partner, adult child or friend, and, as we try to help others through this pandemic, we are also trying to help ourselves.

Even as we recognize that everyone has their own specific large and small crises, we can still have a great deal of understanding and empathy, by virtue of being in the same boat.

Whether you have to separate your child from their grandparents, be mindful of your, or someone else’s, compromised immune system, or console your high school grad who will be missing experiences they’ve anticipated for years, there’s still a lot of common ground.

There are some things we must all figure out in order to cope.

How do we manage (a lot of) unstructured time?

Due to a meeting cancelled at the eleventh hour, I had an entire day completely free.

Normally a dream for a busy person, it felt a little more like a nightmare because of the circumstances. It wasn’t like I decided to take a little staycation. It was last minute, so I didn’t have a plan. It was out of my control. Routine was lacking. Hence, it felt more like a worry than a wow.

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