Author unknown. A young woman went to her grandmother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted …to give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed that as one problem was solved, a…
Category: Self Improvement
What Are Ethics Anyway?
Editor’s Pick. Written by Justin Nafziger. I have observed that people confuse various adjacent terms and ideas as equivalent. Belief and conviction for example, while they may overlap are not one and the same. Another oft misconstrued association is mixing morality, integrity and ethics. To be sure, they do interact heavily, but one and the…
Habit Mastery: Creating the New Normal
Editor’s Pick. Written by Leo Babauta. Changing habits, at its core, is simply a process of changing what’s normal for you. This is something I’ve done myself a gajillion times over the last 7-8 years: not smoking became my new normal (lots of pain for a month or so) running became normal eating vegetarian became…
5 Strategies to Tame Your Inner Critic
Editor’s Pick. Written by Laura Markham. The inner critic’s goal is to protect us. It thinks its job is to constantly scan for threats so it can keep us safe: future dangers, past problems we keep reliving to prevent their recurrence (or prove we were right!), defects in others that we need to control and…
Nurturing Peacefulness
Editor’s Pick. Written by Kerry Spina. Just the word ‘stress’ can make our heart pound, thoughts run wild and body react. Peacefulness is a virtue that can bring the opposite reaction to stress. Balance is restored and nurtured with peacefulness. Peacefulness gives us permission to rest and care for ourselves. It fosters harmonious and respectful…
How and Why to Become a Lifelong Learner
Editor’s Pick. Written by Brett & Kate McKay. For the first twenty-two years or so of our lives, our main “job” is learning. The bulk of our time is spent in classrooms acquiring new knowledge. And then, once we graduate, we feel like the education phase of our lives is done and now it’s time…
Healthy Partnership Conflict Resolution When you Live With Kids
Editor’s Pick. Written by Laura Markham. The nature of human relationships is that we will disagree. It’s wonderful for children to see their parents model how to work out disagreements. It’s important for them to know that we don’t always agree, but we always love each other. And it’s critical for kids to see us…
Don’t Be a Warrior
Editor’s Pick. Written by Jacob Lyles. Do not think of yourself as a warrior or imagine that the world is filled with enemies. It is too easy for the young soldier to declare war on the wrong target – it is surprisingly difficult to choose the right ones. Many intelligent and honest people find themselves…
Spring-Cleaning for Your Psyche
Written by Laura Markham for Aha! Parenting. We all feel at times like we aren’t good enough. Sometimes it’s because we’re in an impossible situation where there simply isn’t enough of us to go around. But often – regardless of the objective situation – we get stuck in negative thought habits. We beat ourselves down,…
Become a Better Parent This Year
Written by Laura Markham for Aha! Parenting. If you make the same resolution every year, join the club. That doesn’t mean you’re a failure. It means you’re headed in the right direction, and you aren’t perfect yet. (Shocking, I know!) The bad news is, you won’t be perfect this year either. The good news is, you…