ThriveologyPodcast – Thriveology

Forgiving is an important skill.  When we forgive people for hurts and slights in the past, we get to free ourselves from those events.

(That skill is so important that I wrote a book about the process I created.  That book comes out in October.)

But what about forgiving yourself?

Why would you need to do that?

Because we all do thing, say things, fail to do and say things, that we regret. And those regrets can haunt us.  They can keep us stuck in the past… in events that are already over.

Sometimes, if another person is involved, they might not even remember what happened or what was said.  But you might continue to torture yourself, chastising yourself for what you said/did, didn’t say/didn’t do.

This requires another skill:  self-forgiveness.

Not just a way to get yourself off the hook.  Not just a way to gloss over what happened.  But a way to move forward.

How do you forgive yourself?  Listen to this week’s episode to find out!

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Schools have based their teaching model on it.  Little league sports have revamped their approach on it.  Parenting has changed to help it.

What is IT?

Self-esteem.

Which is a great concept, at least in the way Nathanial Branden first proposed it.  Not so much in the way we have come to see it as “feeling good about yourself.”  Yep, Branden did want people to feel good about themselves, but not as the end point.  It was part of something bigger.

And when we use the current popular definition, research shows that self-esteem matters little in success, health, wealth, or happiness.

Does that mean we should give up on self-esteem?

Nope.

We just need to return to the original idea.  There is plenty we can do (and need to do) to build self-esteem — in a way that matters for happiness, meaning, purpose… and yes, success.

Learn how to build your self-esteem, in a way that matters, in this week’s podcast episode.

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We all want confidence — SELF-confidence.  We want to be confident before we act.  In other words, I want to feel confident of myself before I move toward something.

Or maybe that’s just me!  

But I think that comes at it from the wrong direction.  FEAR seems to be between us and action.  Mostly because of the order we have for action:

Confidence ==> Action ==> Success.

But instead, we have:

FEAR ==> Wait for Confidence ==> Keep Waiting

If you understandt the real flow, then you can step aside and let fear pass you by, letting you take action AND gain confidence.

Listen to this episode of the Thriveology Podcast to learn more.

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Rules for Living Series

Ancient Stoics and Latin Christians believed that every day we should “memento mori,” we should remember our death.  This practice was not to contemplate how you might die, but that you will die.  As will I.  And everyone else.

Which is what makes life so precious.  And which is what gives value and power to the choices we make in how to live this day.  Not how we lived yesterday or last year, nor how we plan to live tomorrow or next year.  But how we live today.  This is THE day you have.  The only one.

This moment.

We live our lives, spending our time (our most precious resource) moment-by-moment.  Sometimes, time slips away… with us making little progress (or maybe even some regress) toward what we want in life.

This moment.

We move toward our hopes and dreams… we carry out our life purpose… we make an impact in the world in this moment, this day.

It is the only one we have.

In this podcast episode, we talk about living life more fully, more in the moment — today.  In this moment.

RULES OF LIVING SERIES

Rules for Living Series

Some people feel that they are at the whims of the world, unable to make a difference in their own lives.  (They often fall into blame and helplessness.)

Other people believe that they are fully in charge, their lives entirely in their control. (Ironically, they also often fall into blame — self-blame — and frustration.)

The fact is, life is a combination of things that happen and what you do about them — your you respond to the situations life throws your way.  Events, good and bad, are unavoidable.  Your choice is how you deal with them, how you choose to respond.

And if you are trying to get somewhere… if you have some hope or dream… then the process is to keep moving forward, making your choices and taking action.  And at the same time, you wait for the timing to be right.

It is more likely that the timing will be right when you keep taking actions in the direction of what you want.  Luck follows action.

Listen to this week’s podcast for how you might use an equation to get to the outcome you want.

RULES OF LIVING SERIES

Rules For Living Series

“Why don’t they treat me the way I want to be treated?”, my client asked me.

So, I asked, “Have you taught them how to treat you?”

The silence let me know.  But after a pause, my client said, “I guess it never crossed my mind I needed to do that.”

The fact is that people do not know how we want to be treated… unless we are clear about how we are to be treated.  Otherwise, we get treated the way THEY want to treat US, and not the reverse.

In the end, that leaves people frustrated, defensive, and feeling mistreated.

Your BOUNDARIES are what lets people know how you want to be treated.  They are your “NO’s” of life.  Things you will not let people do to(wards) you.

If your boundaries are solid, you are already following this rule.  But if you find yourself being treated in ways you don’t want to be, time to start following this rule, “Teach others how to treat you.”

Listen to this week’s Thriveology Podcast for yet another Rule for Living.

RULES OF LIVING SERIES

Rules For Living Series

Have you ever had that moment when you were doing something or saying something, and there was that other voice in your head… the one questioning why?  Maybe you already knew you were acting in a way you would not want to, or perhaps you were saying something you knew would be hurtful.  But you found yourself doing or saying it anyway….

Your Higher Self was talking.  Were you listening?

In this episode of the Thriveology Podcast, we talk about listening to that Higher Self.  It is far more resilient and wise than that other voice, the Ego, that gets our ear (and our actions) lots of times.

But when we make a shift… to that Higher Self… our lives make a shift, too.  We make better choices, treat others better (along with ourselves), and work from a place of courage.

This week’s Rule?  Listen to your Higher Self.  Listen to this episode for more.

RULES OF LIVING SERIES

Rules For Living Series

Have you ever noticed how many times, we get dragged into the past and the pain, even when those hurtful times are over?  Those remnants of the events can keep us stuck, frozen in the hurt and pain.

Unless we forgive.

That’s a big word, I know.  One that is packed with meaning… and not always helpful meanings.

In another podcast, I highlight my process for actually forgiving.  It is important enough that I have a book coming out on the Forgive Process (actually, the name of the book) in October.

In this episode, we discuss why it is so hard to forgive, why you should do it anyway, and why this is so important as a rule for living.  If you struggle with forgiving, please take a listen.  It might just change your mind!

RULES OF LIVING SERIES

Rules for Living Series

Losses are painful.  No way around it.  They are also normal. Or to say it differently, loss is a normal part of life.  Not an anomalie.  Part of being alive.

And loss leads to grief.  That is our natural reaction to any loss.  Big grief or small grief — that is simply how we process a loss, so that we can re-weave life and continue.

Sometimes, we get caught up in the “unfairness” of a loss, and we get stuck in the grief. In the process, we lose out on life.  We fail to celebrate the gains that also are a part of life.

Think of these three stages throughout your life.  We have a certain orientation to life — we understand what life is about… until something changes — a loss or a gain.  And then, we experience disorientation.  The process of grieving and celebrating brings us to a new orientation — a re-orientation.  Not the same as before.  But not necessarily worse than before.  Just different than before.

So, rule #4 is to grieve your losses and celebrate your gains.  Listen for details below.

RULES OF LIVING SERIES

Rules for Living Series

Time is an interesting thing, isn’t it?  How often do we keep reliving the past, and imagining the future?  Unfortunately, when we are caught in the past and the future, the present suffers.

As I have watched myself and others, I have noticed the tendency we have in trying to change what has happened.  We try to find some way to re-do what has already been done.  We want to find a revisable past.

And simultaneously, we don’t do what we can to revise and re-envision the future.  If only we could swap those two approaches!

What if we accept the past and revised the future, versus trying to revise the past and giving up on the future?

As we continue our series on the Rules for Living, this week, we look at how to accept the past and look toward the best possible future.

Listen below

RULES OF LIVING SERIES