Have you ever wondered why your plans to lose weight, set better boundaries, or spend more quality time with friends often fail? Have you ever been troubled by the fact that despite your best intentions, your inspired aims to make a change become, at best, distant reminders of yet another botched attempt to achieve goals that you know would be…
At the end of an essay on the American painter David Salle in Janet Malcolm’s new collection, Forty-one False Starts, Salle asks the author, “Have you ever thought that your real life hasn’t begun yet?” It’s a sentiment many of us share. Increasing numbers of my psychotherapy clients complain of a life in which they play a bit part. They…
Several months ago I began exercising regularly with my friend Josh, a dedicated and gifted physician with a certificate in personal training and an extensive background in the martial arts. Each training session was different and challenging. Several times Josh abruptly changed my routine in the middle of our workouts when he noticed that a particular activity was too easy…
Gender generalizations make me uneasy. But after practicing psychotherapy for many years with women from diverse racial, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds, there’s one that is unfortunately consistent: most women struggle with genuine self-care. Genuine self-care involves building into your life what you need to flourish—from providing an accepting home for your feelings, to pursuing your passions, to creating harmony between…
There is a real value to an optimistic “everything-is-fine” stance toward life. Studies have shown that pessimists seem to get sick more easily than optimists, experience higher rates of depression, and alienate those closest to them, while optimists—those who see the proverbial glass as half full—live longer than pessimists and are more mentally and physically resilient and productive. “While optimists-at-all-costs say everything…
I just finished rereading A Heart Full of Peace, a wonderful book on Buddhism and the spiritual life written by Joseph Goldstein, one of the premier meditation teachers in the United States. Goldstein, along with Jack Kornfield and Sharon Salzberg, was instrumental in bringing classical Buddhism from the East to the West in the last several decades of the twentieth…
