Happiness vs. Pleasure
I have a confession to make: I didn’t actually feel very good at the gym on Saturday. My triathlon training session — especially my somewhat labored running — was not pleasant. It didn’t actually hurt, but it was hard work for me. I thought of the blog I had posted just the evening before and felt a fraud for having blithely promised that I would be happy at the gym the next day. Would a passer-by think I looked happy? Probably not. Red-faced, perhaps even grimly determined … yes. But happy? Really? The answer was yes. Because happiness and pleasure are not...
Read MoreDrudgery Transformed
How can you stay motivated when you are overwhelmed by a To Do list as long as your arm? Or when everything feels like drudgery and you just can’t make yourself get started? One way I help my clients get into action is to connect them to the purpose underlying what they are doing. Tying one’s activities to a greater mission can transform them from chores into meaningful work. Think for a moment about an artist, a painter perhaps. From the most mundane point of view, her work could be described as menial labor: set up the easel, get out the paints, mix a color, dip the brush, make...
Read MoreSpecial Time on Your Own Doorstep
What makes an occasion special is not so much about what you do or where you go (or how much you spend) but instead about the quality of attention you bring. I already knew this truth, but I was reminded of it this weekend. After our second or third goodnight kiss on Saturday, Margot (age 5-1/2) called out again, “Mommy?” A typical stalling tactic, but I went back into her room. She asked me what we were doing the next day, and I told her I didn’t know. Her confident response: “But it’s going to be special, right?” “Yes,” I assured her....
Read MoreAwareness — Wake Up and Smell the Goldfish!
Awareness is the beginning of change. Case in point: I never realized how much I was eating between meals until I decided to quit snacking. It turns out that I had been consuming a steady stream of totally unworthy calories: a handful of dry cereal, cashews, crusts off my kids’ sandwiches, old Halloween candy, cold pancakes — you name it. I had known that I was snacking more than I should, but I had wildly underestimated the magnitude of my noshing until I swore off snacks for two weeks. Time after time I stopped myself on the verge of popping some little tidbit into my...
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