Self-Coaching

When you meet someone and you’re trying to size them up, chances are logic won’t tell you the whole story. You need to hand yourself over to other important forms of information—intuitive information. In order to do this, you begin by giving up any preconceptions or biases you might have that could interfere with your seeing someone more accurately. From this vantage point you begin to tune into the persons, words, tone, appearance, body language, and so on. All adding data to your final assessment, “should I pursue this relationship or should I flee it?”

Doesn’t matter if it’s your partner, your co-worker, or someone you meet for the first time at a party, learning to read people more accurately will help you with what I call developing your ‘psychological antenna’—the ability to use all your senses to form a more accurate picture of the person you’re connecting with.

In this Self-Coaching episode, you’ll learn the steps involved in assessing someone beyond first impressions. If you’re in a relationship with someone, you’ll learn to better read their non-verbal messages, moods, and defenses. You’ll also learn what you can do to offer people the best and most accurate ‘read’ of you.

I would guess that most children believe in magic--the power to make impossible things happen. As adults, our world becomes devoid of magic as we accept the hard reality that when it comes to life's challenges, there are no magic wands or other fantastic solutions to our struggles. In this Self-Coaching episode, I challenge you to recognize that there is magic, not the abracadabra kind of magic, but the very real, every day magic that comes with understanding the power of optimism--the power to make impossible things become possible.

The magic of optimism offers you a glimpse into the transformative power that you harness when you live with a grounded expectation of personal resilience and resolve. The key isn't eliminating problems, it's managing and handling the inevitable challenges that constitute living in the real world. Is it really magic? I'll let you decide for yourself, but keep in mind that things that seem impossible to you today, may, in fact, become possible with the magic of optimism.

“If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first.” Mark Twain

In this Self-Coaching episode, I discuss the nature of procrastination. Procrastination isn’t an illness or a diagnostic category, it’s a personality tendency (a.k.a., habit). And since procrastination isn’t an ‘illness,’ you don’t have to cure it. You may have to address it, especially if your life is being sabotaged by escaping life’s demands.

Join me as I explore my own “ADD” personality, which in my estimation has nothing to do with an inability to focus, but rather a having a low threshold to boredom. I’m a stimulus junkie and in order to avoid procrastination, anything of low stimulus value requires flexing my self-discipline muscle. Developing your self-discipline muscle is one way you can begin to make your life more efficient and your intentions more obtainable. No more ‘kicking-the-can-down-the-road,’ learn how to flex your self-discipline muscle.

Why do we dream? Are dreams important? Some scientists say that dreams serve no real purpose at all. Whether you interpret a dream or not, most research suggests that there’s no question dreaming is essential to both your physiological and emotional balance. How exactly this is accomplished is anyone’s guess at this point, but one thing is certain, dreams can often be used to facilitate your emotional growth and life journey.

Join me in this Self-Coaching episode and learn a simple approach that will help you decipher your dreams and put them to use for every day mental health. You don’t need to have a Ph.D. in psychology, just a practical Self-Coaching approach that incorporates the previous day’s ups and downs to offer a lead-in to interpreting and understanding your nocturnal stories.

According to Self-Coaching, emotional struggle defies common sense. Truth is, it just doesn’t make any sense to go on struggling month after month, year after year. In this episode join me in a discussion of the fallacy of common sense and how replacing this concept with a more workable concept like ‘practical sense,’ will put you in a much better position to understand and achieve emotional liberation and happiness.

Would you find it unsettling to know that you may have neurotic tendencies? If so, perhaps you need to understand that to a greater or lesser degree we all have a very human inclination toward neurotic behavior(s). Whether it’s worry, irritability, negativity, self-doubt, or being self-conscious, understanding the nature of what we call “neurotic,” is one way to begin to liberate your life from these needless, habituated habits of defensive living.  

In this Self-Coaching episode you’re going to learn, not only how and why we become neurotic, but more importantly, how to coach yourself to find what I call your “inner compass”—your path toward frictionless living. In order to access this inner direction, you first need to understand the impact that neurotically controlling life has on your wellbeing. Simply put, living according to your inner compass is living your life with meaning and purpose, rather than being manipulated by neurotic habits.

The fact is that we all complain—some more, some less. But what’s so bad about complaining? In the Self-Coaching episode, you’ll learn how complaining is like experiencing the same torment over and over again, thereby revisiting the stress of our complaint over and over again. Not only is it stressful to complain, it also turns us into victims, grumblers, and whiners.

Did you know that complaining, especially chronic complaining, is a habit? Yup, complaining actually rewires your brain for negativity, pessimism, and unhappiness. Anatomically, complaining actually shrinks the hippocampus in your brain, which among other duties is involved in critical problem solving and intelligent thought.

In other words, complaining ain’t no free lunch. Join me as I explore the different types of complaining and why it’s in your best interest to break the complaining habit.

You may remember the song from the 50’s, ‘Tossin’ and Turning all night’’? Who hasn’t experienced the torment of not being able to fall asleep? You count sheep or try thinking pleasant thoughts, all to no avail. Meanwhile your frustration and inability to fall asleep has you at wits end. You know that sleep is essential, you know you shouldn’t be worrying about tomorrow’s problems, nevertheless, once again, you wind up ‘tossin’ and turning all night.

In this episode I explain a very simple Self-Coaching technique that I’ve been using successfully for years with my patients. Once you understand the concept, you’ll find that insomnia can be a thing of the past. In fact, you’ll find that falling asleep in five minutes or less isn’t at all unusual.

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting fatigued hearing about the next ‘wave’ of this virus. I believe it’s now called the Ba.5 variant. Great, right!

Granted, it does seem as if we’ve become more resilient since all this began in January 2020. We seemingly have adapted rather well, however, just beneath the surface is that January 2020 reflexive feeling of paranoia. Guess it’s a form of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder)

Is it okay to socialize? Is it practical to go to the theater, restaurants, weddings? Sure, we’ve come a long way, but we’re nowhere near putting Covid in our rear-view mirror. Until that time comes, I’d like to offer a Self-Coaching approach where you can learn the value of being concerned rather than worried, being prudent when defining your comfort zones, and most importantly living each day with legitimate optimism.

We live in a world where frustrations are an inevitable part of life and learning to tolerate frustration should be a part of your healing journey. In this Self-Coaching episode, I talk about the nature of "intolerance"--letting life's frustrations victimize you.

Maybe you've tried counting to 10, taking deep breaths, or thinking of purple elephants, all to no avail. Unless you have a better grasp on how and why you wind up frazzled by life's frustrations, you'll continue to be triggered by these events.

Join me in an exploration of how that pristine moment between the stimulus (frustrating event) and response (becoming frazzled) can become your key to a calmer, healthier acceptance of life's inevitable challenges.