Personal Development

The Loneliness of Smartphone Addiction

The Loneliness of Smartphone Addiction

Cell phone addiction is when, instead of choosing to use our phones, they are just somehow always in our hands, glowing their electric blue promise of being the answers to our every need and desire. They create a dopamine fix of pleasure that keeps us hooked, lusting for next like, engaging text, or candy crushed.

People are addicted to social media now more than ever. We think it will fulfill the Covid sized hole in our social lives. Some connection does happen online, but more often than not, readers leave feeling deflated by how much fun Everyone Else seems to be having. Then, ironically and tragically, we stayed logged-on, scrolling for the happy thing that will bring us up again, or at least back to our baseline.

Illuminating Stories of Color: 6 Shows to Watch Now

Illuminating Stories of Color: 6 Shows to Watch Now

I love how so many artists are finally being given a platform, to expose all the hidden ‘isms that are somehow so much more glaring under Trump. From #MeToo to Black Lives Matter, I hope we’re on a roll that doesn’t end, until we are completely free from all pervasive systems of injustice.

I wanted to take a moment to highlight some great programs that provide beautiful insight into ugly truths:

Beyond Mental Health: Journaling & Immunity

Beyond Mental Health: Journaling & Immunity

Stress is an inevitable part of our lives (especially these days). To many, it may be obvious that how we handle stress, can make a big difference in our mental health. It’s perhaps less obvious, how proactive stress management, can support our physical health.

Mindful Integrity: An 8 Week DIY Mindfulness Course

Mindful Integrity: An 8 Week DIY Mindfulness Course

During times of great upheaval, there’s a sense that we should “to live today as it were your last.” This sounds really appealing, but what does it really mean?

Spiritually speaking, living each day as your last isn’t bestowing worldly possessions and checking-off bucket lists, but about holistic integrity. As Adlai Stevenson famously said, “it is not the years in your life, but the life in your years.” The following are topics of contemplation, calls to action and operating instructions for more mindful living. Try using one of these teachings a week as a focus for your meditation, as journal prompts, or for deepening conversations with loved ones.

Black Lives Matter: Unpack and Use White Privilege for Good

Black Lives Matter: Unpack and Use White Privilege for Good

Our great nation is also a nation built on great injustice. From the near total annihilation of hundreds of nations of indigenous peoples, to the brutal enslavement of 12 generations of Africans who build the foundations of our prosperity. Our nation has a responsibility to educate our selves and perform consistent actions to address and redress these wrongs. Unfortunately, it has taken the ugly pressure cooker of COVID-19, racist presidential policies and the murder of innocents like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, our nation is reigniting a movement which hopefully can create powerful and lasting change.

Boosting Emotional Resiliency During COVID-19

Boosting Emotional Resiliency During COVID-19

The COVID-19 crisis, with its mandated social isolation and pervasive threat of infection, has created a kind of atomic fusion, a clash of mind-numbing monotony mixed with a steady undercurrent of existential crisis.

With the widest lens, this pandemic is a clarion call to see the deep roots of our interdependence. On a smaller scale, it shines a spotlight on the best and worst of our social structures; from the heroic dedication of our first responders, to the disproportionate deaths of our most vulnerable. Finally, on a personal level, we are all connected in the quest to stay flexible in mind and resilient in body, while we the illusion of certainty shatters around us.

The following are some mental health directives to help adapt to the daily (hourly!) seismic shifts in our internal microcosmos, without succumbing to despair.

Therapy as Emotional Coaching

Therapy as Emotional Coaching

One myth, stubbornly persistent in our culture, is that needing therapy means one’s mentally ill. In reality, most people seek out therapy for what I like to call emotional coaching. A holistic therapist serves as a translator between heart & mind, helping create a pause, between stimulus & response. Therapy does not have to be about what’s wrong, but about uncovering all that’s right.

Business Talk Radio Interview: A Professional Biography

Business Talk Radio Interview: A Professional Biography

I am excited to be interviewed this upcoming Monday by Business Talk, on TuneIn Radio. They asked a few deceptively simple pre-interview questions, which provided an opportunity to reflect on my career, my practice and where LiveWork Solutions is headed.

You Are a Spiritual Being, Having a Human Experience

You Are a Spiritual Being, Having a Human Experience

We are everything and we are nothing. In an infinite universe, anything and everything is possible. There is vastly more unknown than known and all of human history is but a sliver of Time.

Soft Addictions: Crutches Can be Useful, Sometimes

Soft Addictions: Crutches Can be Useful, Sometimes

Soft addictions are practices and behaviors we latch onto when we are trying to avoid unpleasant realities, painful truths, or mundane tasks. There is absolutely no shame in using a crutch when we need support, but there is harm continuing to ignore the problem at its root.

8 Ways to Stay Calm in Stressful Situations

8 Ways to Stay Calm in Stressful Situations

Life and work stress is inevitable, but we work to manage how much if affects us. Here are 8 helpful tips for staying cool under pressure.

Navigating Beauty Culture (NBC) comes to The Shames JCC on the Hudson

Navigating Beauty Culture (NBC) comes to The Shames JCC on the Hudson

If you are reading this, I suspect you are a strong woman, dedicated to healing. I believe you, as I am, are driven to love your body, but perhaps have come to recognize that the body hatred was branded onto our psyches. However, the same culture that created this trap, has armed us with the tools we need to free ourselves, it’s just a matter of looking in the right places. Navigating Beauty Culture (NBC) as a hybrid of Feminist Theory study group and body positivity support group.

Alternative Mental Health Techniques Become Mainstream

Alternative Mental Health Techniques Become Mainstream

Mainstream mental health is catching up to the notions of holistic psychotherapy.

Beyond Narcissus: Mirror Meditation

Mirror mediation cuts the ties of projection, by not allowing ourselves to drink the kool-aid, instead rejecting the false belief that we are limited by our appearance. Learn the basics here.