Author: Joel

The Importance of Hoping

August 12, 2015

Do not neglect to hope. Hope is the thing that can draw you into your new life. I am not saying everything will be perfect, but so often we just settle for what we have, not being able to see past the dark, looming forest before us. Hope comes in handy especially when you feel like you are in a rut – in a relationship or in your job, for example. If you go to work everyday or just try to get by in your family everyday, putting up with the same old tired patterns, you will get depressed. ...  Keep reading

Perspective

August 10, 2015

It is important to periodically step back and evaluate where you are going – to sharpen your focus, refine your course, gain some perspective. Without this, you are just a rudderless ship, floating and swaying every which way the wind takes you. One of the greatest gifts we have as human beings is the ability to get outside ourselves – outside of life – and look in, measuring and assessing, ever evaluating in order to choose the best course. Without doing this, you may end up ...  Keep reading

What Your Shame Sounds Like

April 15, 2015

The voices of shame and fear are persistent and numerous. They claw and squawk at you until you gently put them to rest. The only way to do that is by listening to the Strong, Still Voice – the voice that calms and loves you. You long to listen to this voice, but you do not know it because the voices of your anxiety draw such urgent attention to themselves. They are “what you need to do” and “what you need to be” for others. You fear that if you stop listening to ...  Keep reading

Organization

March 18, 2015

As relational beings, we are in relationship to everyone and everything around us. That means we get “organized” in a certain way – in our culture, in our family (of course), in our beliefs and in the roles we play with those around us. We don’t even notice how we are organized really until something changes or is taken away. When the thing that organized you is taken out from under you, you may have a feeling of disorientation or even grief. You will soon reorganize yourself, ...  Keep reading

Connecting with Our Stories

March 16, 2015

It is healthy for us to be connected to and to have a sense of ourselves in our own stories. This means we have “at hand” everything, good and bad, that has happened in our lives in the past and present and we can see ourselves moving into the future with a coherent sense of who we are. This is another way of being “present”.

When bad things happen or our anxieties are raised, things tend to get fragmented. We disconnect because those things are frightful, allowing them ...  Keep reading