When a person has experienced traumatic stress in childhood or as an adult it can change the architecture of the brain in unhelpful ways. This is because traumatic stress changes neural pathways in the brain, making it easier for the brain to interpret normal stimuli in abnormal ways. This rewiring can make the brain respond … Continue reading Strengthen the Brain
Growth
Tools for Tough Times: Mind the Gap
We are living and working in a world of uncertainties. Disruption, unending difficulties and having every hopeful question answered with a firm “no, not yet,” have been our fare for 20 months. Most of us are conditioned to react automatically to the circumstances that occasion our emotional responses. Our sense of emotional equilibrium is usually … Continue reading Tools for Tough Times: Mind the Gap
Tools for Tough Times: Step By Step
How can we transit the difficult times in our lives, with a greater opportunity to thrive? We do this step by step. Here are a few steps you can take now or later this week that may help you to thrive. 1. Recognize when you are experiencing loss, including ambiguous loss. For many, the pandemic … Continue reading Tools for Tough Times: Step By Step
(Not So) Great Expectations
We expected this pandemic would take a year or so, then it would be back to normal. We expected most people to rally to the cause of protecting their neighbors and not their own self-interests. We expected a safer world would return, yet it is getting decidedly less safe. We expected a rest from political … Continue reading (Not So) Great Expectations
Tools for Tough Times: Encouraging Others
Many people endure setback, disease, and disaster with calm and focus. They divorce amicably. They relocate and change careers with little disruption. Some go through major disaster and significant duress with strength and calm. It is not that they are somehow better than the rest of us. It is most often due to their paradigm, … Continue reading Tools for Tough Times: Encouraging Others
Tools for Tough Times: Guard Your Heart
To thrive is to grow vigorously and flourish, to make progress and prosper. Yes, it is possible to grow vigorously and flourish, make progress and prosper in our toughest times. We can come out of difficulties with more than we brought into them. It will come down to how we care for the heart - … Continue reading Tools for Tough Times: Guard Your Heart
Gotta Minute?
In 1914, Ernest Shackleton and his team of 26 scientists, sailors, and explorers - and a stowaway - embarked on a dangerous mission to dogsled across Antarctica. In the days before radio, even if everything went as planned this would be risky, stretching the limits of human endurance. Everything did not go as planned. Their … Continue reading Gotta Minute?
Maximum Maxims
Great quotes and useful life lessons. “Judge not, lest you be judged.” —Jesus “Time and patience are the strongest warriors.” —Leo Tolstoy "Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you'll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you'll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but … Continue reading Maximum Maxims
Maximum Maxims
Useful quotes and life tips. “Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.” — Jose Ortega y Gasset “Better to trip with the feet than with the tongue.” — Zeno “Space I can recover. Time, never.” — Napoleon Bonaparte “You never know who’s swimming naked until the tide goes … Continue reading Maximum Maxims
Adaptive Leaders: No Growth is Failure
To achieve one’s potential as a person, an influencer, and a leader, one must move from fixed or mixed mindset into a true growth mindset (see previous post here). To quote Carol Dweck, one of the top researchers of growth mindset development: “It’s hard work, but individuals and organizations can gain a lot by deepening … Continue reading Adaptive Leaders: No Growth is Failure