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Book Review: Change Your Life Not Your Wife
I found this book to be equally great advice for both men and women in high powered relationships. Many relationships fall into this category of one person being over-invested in their job while the other is typically an at-home parent or homemaker, feeling alone in their marriage. This book specifically speaks to these couples.
Parenting Q & A
Q: Always love your articles Kim! But its so hard to let go of trying to control people and situations! This its especially hard as
Book Review: Contemporary Issues in Couples Counseling
I was recently honored to be asked to contribute a chapter to a book entitled, Contemporary Issues in Couples Counseling: A Choice Theory and Reality Therapy Approach. This book was written to legitimize Reality Therapy as a method of counseling for systemic issues. It’s not just for individuals.
Don’t Let Self-Sabotage Stop You
InsideOut Empowerment Principle #9: People are frequently sabotaging themselves with thinking that is outside of their conscious awareness that was likely installed at a very young age, before they were able to discriminate between truth and lies. I have been a coach for a group of high significance people who are writing books. In almost every case without exception, these people experienced self-sabotage at some point along the way. Where does it come from? It comes from the stories we tell ourselves that are based on messages that were given to us from others before we were old enough to tell the truth from lies. Mostly these early messages came from people we trusted, like our parents, teachers, relatives, and members of our spiritual community.
Pain Must Exceed Fear
InsideOut Empowerment Principle # 8: People do not change until the pain of staying the same exceeds their fear of change. You may have a superficial desire for something but until you can drill down deep enough to discover your real soul reason for wanting to make a change, it won’t happen. And then you will want to examine just how painful it will be to do nothing. Really flesh out the scenario. You want to create as much psychic pain as you can muster so you will make a change. Sometimes just wanting something is not enough. It must be more painful to do nothing than to risk the change.
Change Either/Or Thinking to Both/And Please
InsideOut Empowerment Principle #7: People often see their choices as either/or choices, creating imagined dilemmas and forced choices. For as long as I can remember, my family serves both pumpkin and apple pie for dessert on Thanksgiving. The question is always, “Do you want pumpkin or apple pie?” I want to know why I can’t have both? Now that’s a simple example with a simple solution. Think of some things you force yourself into a choice over when it would be possible for you to have both. For example, I want to eat chocolate/I want to lose weight; I want to buy the things I want/I want to eliminate my credit card debt; I want people to like me/I want to be myself.
How to Improve Your Physical and Emotional Health
InsideOut Empowerment Principle #6: Much of our health, both physical and emotional, is strongly affected by our actions and our thoughts, both of which we have the power to change. If you don’t like the emotions you are experiencing or your current state of health, you can indirectly affect change by changing your actions and/or your thinking.
What Do You Really Want?
InsideOut Empowerment Principle #5: When you find yourself unhappy about the conditions of your life, you should first clarify specifically what you want rather than focusing on what you want to avoid. So often, we can articulate what we don’t want but when asked to specify what we do want, we don’t know how. This is a little like making a list for the store of what you don’t need, going shopping, and expecting to come home with everything you want. It will never work.
We Want What Feels Good To Us
InsideOut Empowerment Tenant #4: What you want is based on what feels good to you (increasing pleasure or avoiding pain). Remember, what you want feels good to you. It may not feel good to everyone, especially those close to you. If people know what you want, they may judge you if they don’t think it’s a “good” thing to want. For example, my son quit college 18 credits shy of graduating. I certainly didn’t think that was a good thing. He didn’t want to go further in debt by going another semester. This was his choice, his decision, his life. There were many people in his life, who claim to love him, that told him what a mistake he made. It’s seven years later and he earns a six-figure income in a sales position in a rural area where the cost of living is less than most places in the US. Should he have graduated? Who can say conclusively? Perhaps the stress of owing more money for student loans would have caused him to do something desperate. We’ll never know. All I know is that it was his decision to make and my job was to support him in his right to make it.