As most of you know, I recommend that the first question that you ask when you are faced with a challenge is, “What can go right?” It enables you to attack problems with a positive mindset, and it fights the tendency to get so focused upon possible negative outcomes that you stop thinking about solutions.…
This year’s Super Bowl will soon be upon us. Although I don’t have a rooting interest in either team in this year’s game, I look forward to watching it – and I suspect most of you will be doing so as well. There have been some very exciting Super Bowl games recently, but over the…
The great golfer, Arnold Palmer, is the source of some terrific quotes. Two of my favorites are: “Winning isn’t everything, but wanting it is;” and “I never quit trying. I never felt that I didn’t have a chance to win.” Think about the message in those quotes. Indeed, winning isn’t everything. In most endeavors there…
Some of us enter a new year by resolving to make certain behavior changes – relative to personal habits or interests or career directions or how we treat others. It is easier to decide to change a behavior than it is to actually change it. The large number of people who fail to maintain a…
While the approaching New Year marks a time for making resolutions and preparing for a new start, something else should be taking place in addition to planning ahead. Before making New Year’s resolutions, I always encourage people to do a “Success Audit” for the previous year. There is nothing wrong with making resolutions (aside from…
Once again in the United States, we are confronted with a horrendous and unthinkable tragedy. In an elementary school designed for learning in a safe environment, 26 innocent people were killed by the bullets of an individual who had given up his right to be called a member of the human race. Making this tragedy…
Mirrors are designed to help you see yourself objectively – as others see you. It doesn’t always work out that way. Those of us who have worked with patients with eating disorders are well aware of the fact that anorexic patients who are objectively skinny can see themselves as being fat? Some attractive patients can…
Thanksgiving just passed, marking the beginning of the holiday season. Most major faiths celebrate important holidays in the next several weeks, and this is also a time for joy and celebration among most individuals – whether they are spiritual or not. Commercialization and other excesses, however, cause some people to face the holidays with trepidation. …
That famous philosopher, Yogi Berra, made a profound statement in his own special way when he said, “If you don’t go to other people’s funerals, they won’t come to yours”. Despite the impracticality of achieving all parts of that idea, the thought behind it is very appropriate. One of the best things that you can…
It’s a very common but self-defeating characteristic. I’m speaking of the tendency of so many people to downplay their positive traits – which then leads giving a negative spin to something that is objectively good. I’ve worked with women who, when asked what they do for work, say they are, “just a housewife” – despite…
I hear variations of the same theme a few times a week in may office as patients tell me: “I’ve been following my diet for a week and I haven’t lost any weight”; I’ve made a deliberate attempt to speak up in class this semester and I still feel nervous when I do”; I’ve gone…