Archive for 'Change'

As some of you know, I spent a large part of my childhood in Santa Cruz – in many ways, I still consider it home, even though I’ve lived in Sacramento far longer than I lived in SC. When I think back to my first week of college in New England, all I remember is an endless stream of other freshman asking me “do you surf?” after learning where I was from. While I never did take up surfing, I ...

If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter or have looked at the Location page on my website recently, you already know this news item: I’m moving my office! Effective 1/30/12, my office will move to 1006 4th Street, Suite 302, in the old California Fruit Building in downtown Sacramento. It turns out that this a building with some interesting history attached to it – it is the oldest reinforced concrete ‘high rise’ west of the Mississippi, and at ...

Things change. Fast. It’s easy to forget that when we’re in the midst of a rough week at work, a fight with our spouse, or a child’s tantrum, but it’s true. As more years add up in the rear-view mirror of my life, the impermanence of everything in our world gets more and more airtime in my mind. For me, it can be easy to slip into a state of sadness about this when I realize how fleeting some of ...

(This was originally posted on ‘Happy Now, Sad Later’ a couple of years back. It may be even more relevant now than it was then. This version is revised.)

Really, I mean it. Have we become so used to and so self-righteous about our ‘right’ to pleasurable feelings that we’ve lost sight not only of our ability to tolerate discomfort, but also the benefits that might come from pushing ourselves beyond our comfort zone?

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not some ...

“Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.” – Andrew Jackson

2000 was a difficult year for me. I had come to a point where I was very unhappy with my work in the IT field. I enjoyed some aspects of it, but found much of it to be frustrating, unfulfilling, and not terribly meaningful.  I had realized that it wasn’t really what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. ...

I grew up as the only child of a single parent and moved frequently until we settled down in Santa Cruz when I was 10. I was fortunate in many ways as a child, not so much so in others. Minimization was a tool that I used to help me cope with some of the challenges of my childhood. I always told myself that the things I had to deal with in childhood were ‘no big deal’. Relative to the ...

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” – Carl Rogers, psychologist

Acceptance, the second of The Three A’s is, probably the most basic one in concept. However, for many people, it’s the hardest to put into action. Since there’s a lot of ground to cover, I’m going to take two posts to talk about acceptance. In this one, I’ll talk about acceptance, what it is, why there’s such a lack of ...

“The world is not a problem; the problem is your unawareness” – Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

There are many different theories and models of change. One of my favorites is one that comes from the 12-step world – ‘the Three 3 As’ (Awareness, Acceptance, and Action). I’m going to take a few blog posts to talk about the Three As and how they can be used as a simple but powerful model for creating change. This post will focus on Awareness.

Awareness is ...

About a third of my new clients have never been to a counselor or psychotherapist before. Often, they don’t really know what to expect or how the process ‘works’. If you’re in therapy or considering it, here are five tips to help you get more from the experience:

1) Be as specific as you can with your therapist about what you want to get from counseling.  The clearer you can be about your goals, the more likely you are to achieve ...

Ever decided you were going to make a big change in your life, put together a plan that you were all fired up about initially, but ended up feeling like a failure after a few weeks? All too often, the initial rush of adrenaline when we think about and begin a new ‘personal project’ such as losing weight, improving a relationship, or changing careers turns into frustration, disappointment,and maybe even self-criticism when we hit roadblocks, frequently leading to the project ...