“Be Yourself”, says Henri Nouwen, in today’s daily Bread for the Journey reflection. Wise and comforting advice for us all! “Often we want to be somewhere other than where we are, or even to be someone other than who we are. We tend to compare ourselves constantly with others and wonder why we are not as rich, as intelligent, as simple, as generous, or as saintly as they are. Such comparisons make us feel guilty, ashamed, or jealous. It is very
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Trust is built one marble at a time (Dr. Brene Brown) How you do you know you can trust someone? How do you know you can trust yourself? I’m pretty sure most if not all of us have struggled with trust at numerous points in our personal or professional lives. I certainly have. For example, I struggle with trusting others when I share something in confidence with a “friend”, only to later discover that this person shared my information with others.
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There is nothing that cannot be forgiven, and there is no one undeserving of forgiveness. When you can see that we are all bound to one another—whether by birth, by circumstance, or simply by our shared humanity—then you will know this to be true. (Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu) When you think of your physical, emotional and spiritual well-being, what one word comes to mind? In their book, The Book of Forgiving; The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our
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Life structures can help us reach our goals and become the person we want to be. Life structures come in all shapes and sizes, and the number of them we can create is unlimited. An exercise class is a life structure that helps maintain fitness. A shopping list is a life structure that helps ensure a shopping experience guided by needs, not wants. A weekly housekeeper or designated “cleaning day” is a life structure that helps eliminate mess. A menu plan is a
Read more →“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may be another profound truth.” (Neils Bohr-Nobel Prize-winning physicist) We can develop personal character and become more effective in our relationships by learning to hold the tension of opposing qualities within ourselves in responsible and balanced ways. Such learning requires us to think about some (but not all) things as “both-ands” instead of “either-ors.” For example, I can be dependent and independent in the same relationhip,
Read more →The pictures I remember seeing of myself as a child are limited. Yes, there were baby pictures of my siblings and me hanging in the house, but my parents stored most of their photos as slides which were packed into small cardboard boxes in the hallway closet. Upon occasion, my parents would use a slide-viewer or slide projector to view the slides with us kids, but rarely did we get through all of them. When one of my brothers recently digitalized hundreds of my parent’s slides for a family
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