When it comes to setting goals, most people tend to focus on the areas society urges and expects us to without regard for what’s truly important to us. I’m proposing that this a flawed path toward goal attainment. People need to consider their five basic needs: which ones are most important and which ones are […]
The holiday season is upon us. For many, it adds financial stress to the other stressful things associated with the holidays. While browsing social media, I found a meme that read: Debt keeps you paying for your past so that you never get to invest in your future. What do you think of that statement? […]
November is National Runaway Prevention Month. No one wants to hear of children running away from home and it’s an incredibly complex issue. Some teens run because they are being abused at home. Others run because they have been tempted by freedom. Some run to be with a romantic interest. And some haven’t run at […]
This is International Balance Awareness Week, created to raise awareness about the difficulties people face with disorders that affect their physical balance. Today, though, I’d like to discuss balance of a different kind: balance awareness in mental health. When I write about mental health, I do not mean it as a euphemism for mental illness—I […]
In honor of International Peace Month, I thought it appropriate to write about what constitutes peace. Internationally, most people think of peace as the absence of war. Nationally, it may look like bi-partisan solutions to issues with an active, participating citizenship. On an interpersonal level, peace is seen as respect. On an intrapersonal level, peace […]
A Healthy Relationship …what does that look like? As a relationship counselor, one of the biggest problems I see is that people in relationships are under the mistaken impression that their partner is supposed to meet their needs for them. This stems from the romantic notion that when two people get together, they mysteriously become […]
Self-esteem isn’t something you can give another person; it’s something they need to cultivate for themselves. However, the environment you create around children can make that task easy or difficult and anything in between. If you are a parent, an educator, or any position that works with children, you can make this task easier by […]
In my series on basic needs and self-care, I saved the best for last. I think Connection is the best—probably because it’s my highest personal need, but also because, out of the five needs, its fulfillment is the most important to your overall well-being. Everyone needs someone to love and someone to be loved by […]
While I was writing my book, Choosing Me Now, I discovered something that surprised me: we all have some sort of built-in need-strength bias. To understand what this means, you might want a rudimentary understanding of Choice Theory, the psychological theory developed by the late Dr. William Glasser. Choice Theory teaches that we are born […]
If you are following my blogs on Strategic Self-Care, then you already know I have an unconventional, Choice Theory approach to the topic, which will be revealed in my forthcoming book, Choosing Me Now, out on Amazon June 4. It will be available for preorder on May 4th. You can find my other self-care blogs […]
