Ranking importance is critical to mental health What IS the matter? Matter is an interesting word. It’s a noun and a verb. The noun means something of substance and can be physical or metaphysical. The verb means for something to be important. There’s matter, and there is the matter. I like words like that, but the complication of communication and understanding. The idea of something mattering, as a verb, has been on my mind lately. The…
What matters to you? What is important? What do you value (Episode 46 Values)? We say things matter to us when we put energy into developing, protecting, and thinking about them. Our families matter. Our relationships matter. Things that matter have meaning to us. What is meaningful to me might not be meaningful to you. But as I have said before, I think there are some things that have universal meaning. They matter to us all. Life. Peace. Calm. Justice. Love. Integrity. Many would…
There was a time when my relationship with my father was pretty good. But during my teenage years I pretty much avoided him. During that period he gave me a lot of advice I didn’t want nor listen to. One of the things he told me was that I needed to ‘Walk the Talk’. The essence of this advice is that we need to live a life of integrity. After living half my life on…
I learned about the personal inventory reading Carlos Castaneda’s book series about Don Juan and the Toltec ‘men and women of knowledge’. The idea of a personal inventory describes the process of examining one’s total life from every possible angle. By looking inward and examining one’s life, we can summarize all the things that we have done, what has happened to us, our system of beliefs, and what comprises our ‘self’. This is a metaphysical…
In just about any kind of self help endeavor you will be asked to identify your values. While this sounds pretty easy, the process is far from simple. Turns out we like a lot of stuff. We ‘value’ many things. The trick is determining your top 3-5 values that truly drive you to live your life. Over the course of ten years of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), or talk therapy, I read and heard a…
This week I share my story about identifying my values. Identifying values is one of those things that sounds easy, but is not simple. Sure, anyone can sit down with some online tools (like James Clear’s Life Lessons values journal), but it’s deceptively difficult to REALLY drill down to your personal values. On the surface values are things like love, joy, safety, and other intangibles that motivate you to live your life. Values are things…
In Episode 32: Work/Life Balance I shared my thoughts about how to find time to meet all the various needs we have. In this episode I want to focus specifically on balancing time spent working toward our careers with time spent with our families. And for those of you without spouses or kids, your family can be your parents, siblings, friends, coworkers or any other people you value and spend time with. The main career/family…
Since recording this episode I have read and implemented James Clear’s ‘Atomic Habits’ and HIGHLY recommend it. Clear eloquently describes how to break old habits and create new ones. My take on habits contains many elements from ‘Atomic Habits’ as there are several universal themes. Bad habits are easy to maintain. Good habits are hard to build. After reading Clear’s book I have been able to add several new habits to my daily routine following…
I recorded this episode based on a story someone once related to me about her post high school goals being ‘restricted’ by her family and cultural traditions. In other words, people ‘like her’ didn’t do certain things, or more accurately, could only do certain things. There were only so many career choices, or partner choices, or even the kinds of cars she could drive. Like many things I simultaneously appreciate and despise this notion. On…