How can praise stunt your creative progress?

#233 – How can praise stunt your creative progress?People who do creative work tend to fear criticism: what if they don't like it, we think.But there's something more dangerous than audiences disliking our work – their enthusiastic praise.In 2003 I s...

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Feb 25, 2025
What signal does patience send your brain?

#232 – What signal does patience send your brain?As defined by the Cambridge Dictionary, patience is"the ability to wait, or to continue doing something despite difficulties, or to suffer without complaining&nb...

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Feb 24, 2025
What's the source of your indecision?

#231 – What's the source of your indecision?"If you have more than one reason to do something (choose a doctor or veterinarian, hire a gardener or an employee, marry a person, go on a trip), just don’t do it. It does not mean that one reason is bette...

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Feb 23, 2025
Has "feeling good" become a tyranny?

#230 – Has "feeling good" become a tyranny?A few years ago, I met a woman in an online community whose husband had died unexpectedly. She wrote that, when learning the news, she'd dropped to her knees, in disbelief and unfathomable pain.Then, she sai...

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Feb 22, 2025
Is self-victimization keeping you stuck in guilt?

#229 – Is self-victimization keeping you stuck in guilt?The Ghost of Misplaced Guilt (GoMG) had been gnawing at my ear every Monday since I started my weekend job selling coffee machines at a mall, with a commute of at least 90 minutes each way. "You...

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Feb 21, 2025
What does openness give you that hope doesn't?

#228 – What does openness give you that hope doesn't?The act of hoping is, in itself, a judgment.Hoping implies categorizing some life events as intrinsically, objectively "desirable," and others as "undesirable."But is that true? Desirable according...

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Feb 20, 2025
What's wrong with clinging to hope?

#227 – What's wrong with clinging to hope?Since I mentioned Pema Chödrön's "anti-hope" teachings ("When we give up hope, that is the beginning of the beginning," in When Things Fall Apart), a few weeks back, I've been seeing more and more how hope is...

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Feb 19, 2025
How are you resisting life by "trusting?"

#226 – How are you resisting life by "trusting?"I used to believe that the ultimate act of surrender was total trust –– like riding the roller coaster hands off. But that's not accurate. Like hope, trust has a hidden agenda: a specific outcome that y...

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Feb 18, 2025
How might you be defending yourself?

#225 – How might you be defending yourself?This morning, the A Course In Miracles* lesson I read was, "If I defend myself, I am attacked."When a few hours later I was doing dishes, the idea came to me that I defend myself way more than I'm aware of....

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Feb 17, 2025
If change is natural, why do we resist it?

#224 – If change is natural, why do we resist it?Life is, by definition, ongoing change. Call it evolution, if you'd like.Every day that passes, every minute, things are happening in our body and the world that make us and the world different from be...

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Feb 16, 2025