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When the mother of my son was in the throes of labor pains with him in the delivery room, it was really scary and really awful. 

The thing that helped us push through what seemed like unbearable suffering was that our son would be born and that very soon, we would be able to hold him and see him and love him.

During this global pandemic, with all of the suffering that it’s causing, I’ve thought back to that experience and connected it in my mind with a famous quote from Viktor Frankl:

“In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.”

– Viktor Frankl

As you have probably heard me say before, I am not one of those people who believes that “everything happens for a reason” and that this “reason” is some mysterious secret of the Universe that we may or may not ever get to discover for ourselves.

Instead, it has been my experience that meaning is something that we create. 

How do we go about doing this? 

Well, meaning is very closely tied to intention. 

So, one powerful way that we can begin to create some meaning is by getting clear on what matters to us in a given circumstance. When we know what matters to us, we can then set our intention accordingly for how we want to be or how we want to show up or act in the situation. 

Now, before I go any further, I want to be sensitive here and careful not to give the impression that I’m somehow trying to turn this global pandemic into this sunny, global growth opportunity which minimizes the tremendous suffering that many are experiencing right now. 

Instead, what I’m pointing to is the fact that adversity is often a chance for us to become better people, better versions of ourselves, and to grow. It has consistently been the fertile soil from which most of my growth has come.

This idea of “Post Traumatic Growth” can happen when we shift to connect with meaning and intention which can carry us through times of great suffering in transformational ways. 

Jack Kornfield was interviewed in a recent New York Times article, and he spoke to this very idea:

“It’s time to make a vow, to sit quietly, rest your heart and ask, “What is my best intention, my most noble aspiration in this difficult time?” If you quiet yourself, your heart will answer. The answer could be simple: “I vow to be kind no matter what.” And when you find the answer in yourself, write it down and place it somewhere you’ll remember. Then when you feel lost or confused, take a breath and remember that vow. Because it’s time to become the lamp in the darkness.”

He goes on to say:

“When you live in speculative thoughts — “How long is it going to last?” “Will I make it through three more days or three more months?” — how does that make you feel? … you can either spend your time worrying, which…doesn’t actually help, or you can say: “I don’t know how long it will be, but let me do the most magnificent work I can do.”

We all find ourselves wondering how long this time of uncertainty and restrictions and fear will last. Of course, we want suffering to end.

When I catch myself starting down that road, I pause and remember that this is life and the nature of life is that growth happens not when things are easy, but rather when things are hard. 

These circumstances are a portal to awakening and growth. Ram Dass called difficulty “grist for the mill”. Former guest of the show, Mary O’Malley, says “what’s in the way, is the way”.

And it’s really helpful to remember that life doesn’t resume again when this global pandemic is over – inferring that we just need to wait this out as if we’ve hit some kind of pause button on life. Life is always and only – now.

Part of not just coping – but growing – amidst this difficult time is rooted in orienting around a deep intention. If we can connect with what really matters to us, then when the intensity of things ramps up and the difficulty level is acute, we can remember our greater purpose – the one we’ve set for ourselves – and we can find the strength to weather the storm.

So, I invite you to pause for a moment if you can. I’m going to walk you through a brief inquiry that will set the stage for a simple Spiritual Habit which I’ll share with you – one that’s based on Jack Kornfield’s wise words. You can practice this Spiritual Habit when things feel difficult and intense to ground and steady yourself.

Take a few full, deep breaths and pay attention to what comes up for you when you consider these questions – pick whichever one works best for you:

• How do I want to be through this difficult time?
• What really matters to me amidst all that is happening?
• What is my deepest intention for how I want to move through and come out of this season of suffering?
• When things get really difficult, what do I want to remember about what is real and true for me?

When you sense that you have gotten an answer from your heart to any of these questions, capture your intention by writing it down somewhere – on a piece of paper, in your phone or anywhere that you’ll be able to see it when you need to remember it.

All Spiritual Habits have a trigger or prompt to practice them and your trigger to practice this one is when you find yourself really suffering amidst this global pandemic. 

When that happens, call to mind this intention that you’ve set for yourself. Find the note you made of it and read it or remember it and say it quietly to yourself. Remind yourself of what matters to you and align yourself with this intention in the moment as best you can. Feel a shift inside as you touch into what you can control, which is, how you relate to what’s happening.

And that reminds me of another great Viktor Frankl quote:

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” 

– Viktor Frankl

To go deeper with these ideas, check out this mini-episode in which I talk a bit more about this idea of Post Traumatic Growth. 

To help support your growth during this difficult time, I’m offering free and discounted coaching in a number of ways right now:

• Free weekly group coaching calls on Wednesdays at 12pm Eastern Daylight Time
• Free 1-on-1 coaching for frontline healthcare workers
• Discounted 1-on-1 coaching services (The One You Feed Personal Transformation Program, The 1-on-1 Spiritual Habits Program or a blend of the two programs)

To learn more about how to take advantage of any of these resources, head to our COVID-19 Support page.

If you would like to see if working 1-on-1 with me as a behavior coach is right for you, I offer a free 30-minute intro call to see if we’re a fit to work together. 

On the intro call, there is no pressure to sign up to work with me. Instead, we’ll spend our time on the phone talking about the specific challenges you’re facing and we’ll explore how I might help. Whether or not we decide to work together, I’ll offer my thoughts on how you might work with these challenges to overcome them and make some progress in the areas of your life where you’re feeling stuck. 

Need help working through difficult feelings or thoughts? Maybe you know you could use support figuring out how to prioritize self-care (meditation, exercise, healthy eating habits), or you need to learn how to break through procrastination, or structure your days to remain productive despite all the challenges? 

Bring me what you’re struggling with and let’s see if we’re a fit to work together to get you past whatever is blocking you.

To take advantage of this discount on my 1-on-1 coaching services, click here to book your free intro call.

Take good care, 

Eric

Emotional First Aid: What to do when feeling fear in the face of uncertainty

How to move from worry and fear to steady, open-hearted presence (especially when everything is uncertain)

How to go from fearful, anxious and worried to steady, open-hearted and present (even when everything is uncertain)

If the uncertainty of this global crisis has you feeling fearful, anxious, and worried, read on. This post is for you. 

I want to shine a light on what’s going on beneath the surface for us when we get caught in a really fearful reaction to the uncertainty that we are so acutely aware of in times of crisis. And, I want to offer up two other paths that we can take instead that each leads us to a place of internal wisdom, open-heartedness, deep steadiness, and presence. 

Uncertainty falls under the umbrella of what Mark Nepo calls “the terrible knowledge.” 

Uncertainty – or, the fact that anything could happen to any of us at any time – is the reality in which we live. There are times when this is more obvious to us than others (like in a global pandemic) but whether we see it or not, it is always true. 

So, the birthplace of our suffering – and our freedom – is in our relationship with uncertainty.

And this is good news – because while we can’t change the very nature of reality, we can change how we relate to this fact of life. We just need some skills and know-how and practice to do so.

I’ve heard the Buddhist teacher, Jack Kornfield, tell a story about something that happened one day many years ago when he was on a walk to town as a Buddhist monk with his teacher and fellow monks. 

As they passed by a huge boulder, his teacher turned to the group of monks and asked, “Is that boulder heavy to us?” to which the students replied, “Why yes, master!”. His teacher smiled, and he said, “Not if we don’t pick it up!”.

So, one way we pick up the boulder of uncertainty is by looking through a lens called the negativity bias. 

When we are caught in the negativity bias, as is so often our default as humans, we tend to see and remember things with a negative nature more than things with a positive nature. 

The negativity bias is connected to our survival instinct. Spotting and remembering potential dangers or threats can serve us well when it comes to staying alive. It becomes problematic, however, when we have this lens on all the time, unaware that it is coloring all that we see with the big, black brushstrokes of impending doom. 

We take on the negativity bias when we sense uncertainty, and our mind jumps to identify all of the terrible things that could happen. We then get hit with waves of deep fear and anticipated grief.

See, when we look through the lens of the negativity bias, we don’t see the whole picture. 

In this week’s episode, Mark Nepo said that in the modern world, we have catastrophized our relationship to the unknown. 

He went on to say that it’s like watching the weather report on the news these days. Instead of calling it simply “the weather report”, it’s now often called “superstorm watch”. 

There are all types of weather to come, and we may be in a week full of peaceful, sunny spring days but instead of giving full weight to all kinds of weather, we are constantly searching for the next destructive, dangerous storm, pointing it out weeks before it could even potentially strike. 

The undeniable reality is that the unknown can produce love and beauty just as it can produce difficulty and hardships.

I am not trying to downplay the suffering that is going on around the world, especially right now. I am just looking to color in the rest of the picture so that we have a more balanced view of the reality of uncertainty. 

Though we can often have a fearful reaction when faced with uncertainty, we are well-served to remember that uncertainty holds the potential for positive things to emerge, too. This helps us release the grip of fear and let go into the life that is showing up for us in the present moment. If we’re always bracing in fear, we miss the rest of life as it is happening.

So, the first pathway back to a more open-hearted presence is to identify when you’re taking on a negativity bias in the face of uncertainty. When you name the fear that is stirred up because of this perspective, you become the larger space that can observe the fear instead of being caught inside fear itself. 

The second pathway I’ll share with you is found in how we work with our worried, anxious thoughts and feelings in the midst of uncertainty.

In her book, The Wisdom of Anxiety, Sheryl Paul gives a really helpful paradigm to consider:

“We simply don’t like [living with uncertainty]. We want definitive answers [and] we are intrinsically wired to gravitate toward a need for control and a subsequent attempt to create the illusion of control.”

She goes on to say that intrusive thoughts, rumination, and worry are the mind’s attempt to create some certainty and thereby feel in control:

“The fear-based self believes that if you could answer the intrusive thoughts of the day, you would hedge your bets and know, without any doubt, that you’re okay…Because the fear-based self is terrified of risk, terrified of anything that touches into vulnerability.”

She points to the path out of ruminating thoughts which is to feel the difficult feelings that come up in the face of uncertainty:

“Let yourself feel that terror. Let yourself begin to befriend the mystery of life instead of clinging to what you think you can control. The truth is that there is so little we can control…The only freedom is to make friends with not knowing.”

“We seem wired as humans to try and control outer circumstances in an attempt to avoid painful and uncomfortable feelings…The more you practice cutting through the habit of spider-monkeying up the vines of anxiety that entrap your brain, and instead drop back down into your heart, where your feelings live, the less anxious and more peaceful you will feel.”

When we find ourselves in a state of worry, of intrusive thoughts, ask, “What is this thought protecting me from feeling?”

When we sense the answer to that question, we can contact these feelings with kindness, opening to them, breathing through them, allowing them to exist and be felt – and then to pass. Because all feelings follow the same pattern: They show up, they peak, and then they pass. 

If you’d like to learn more about how to work with difficult feelings when they arise, click here to check out a blog post on the topic. I walk you through how to move through them in such a way that you’re more in touch with your deeper, wiser self as a result. Plus, there’s a ridiculously cute picture of a pug at the top of the post. That alone will surely make you smile.

I hope these approaches to uncertainty, fear, and anxiety are helpful to you right now, my friend.

If you would like to explore these topics further with me as a behavior coach, I offer a free 30-minute intro call to see if we’re a fit to work together. And I’m discounting my 1-on-1 coaching services right now to try and make them as accessible as possible to as many people as possible.

On the intro call, there is no pressure to sign up to work with me. If we’re a match to work together, that will be clear to both of us. High-pressured sales calls couldn’t be further from how I operate in business and in life. 

Instead, we’ll spend our time on the phone talking about the specific challenges you’re facing and we’ll explore how I might help. Whether or not we decide to work together, I’ll offer my thoughts on how you might work with these challenges to overcome them and make some progress in the areas of your life where you’re feeling stuck. 

Depending on your individual goals and challenges, I can offer either the content of The Spiritual Habits Program, The Personal Transformation Program, or a blend of the two programs. 

Need help working through difficult feelings or thoughts? Maybe you know you could use support figuring out how to prioritize self-care (meditation, exercise, healthy eating habits), or you need to learn how to break through procrastination, or structure your days to remain productive despite all the challenges?

Click here to book a free 30-minute intro call with me to talk about what’s got you feeling stuck right now. 

Also, for the foreseeable future, I am offering weekly free group coaching calls on Wednesdays at 12 pm Eastern Daylight Time. On the call, you can ask questions or let me know what you’re struggling with, and I’ll offer my thoughts on how you might go about working through things in a strengthening, productive way. You can grab the Zoom link to join the calls on our COVID-19 Support page.

Wishing you well – especially right now,

Eric

Do you know what’s even more contagious than the Coronavirus? 

Fear.

It’s easy to get caught up in the global crisis mentality that’s going on right now which breeds fear and panic in the minds of people as we’re facing the coronavirus pandemic.

That’s not to say that fear is “wrong” or that fear “shouldn’t” show up in us at all. 

That’s also not to say that there are not good reasons for fear or worry around this situation.

Fear is an intelligent emotion and it certainly has a useful place in our lives – up to a point. 

Fear can help us take action, alerting us to potential danger or harm so that we can protect ourselves and others. That’s a very useful, good thing.

But fear can also become crippling and it can overwhelm us. It can be an unpleasant feeling and it can really do a number on us when it stays around for long periods of time. 

Because of that, I thought I’d share some ways to work with fear, point out a couple of podcast episodes that you can listen to on the topic, as well as teach you a Spiritual Habit that you can turn to for help moving through the feeling of fear so that you can connect to the place within you which is discerning, wise, and steady. 

In a recent interview about how to strengthen resilience, Linda Graham said, “How you respond to the issue IS the issue.”

So, the issue of how we each individually respond to the fear of a pandemic is the most pressing issue for each of us. 

I’ll offer up Stephen Covey’s idea of the circle of influence vs. the circle of concern. 

Covey says that your Circle of Influence contains things that you can take action on and affect directly. In contrast, your Circle of Concern contains things that you worry about but can’t really take direct action on to change.

It’s helpful to become aware of which Circle we’re spending most of our time in as it relates to the Coronavirus fear we’re currently all facing.

If we spend all of our time watching the news beyond that which is instructive or helpful, we’re in the Circle of Concern. And that can feel paralyzing.

But if we spend our time identifying the things we can take action on and affect, we’re back in the empowering Circle of Influence. 

One of the most impactful ways to spend time in the Circle of Influence is to focus on self-care. 

Supporting your (and your loved ones’) mental, physical and emotional health right now is especially important. 

By prioritizing the fundamentals of self-care – eating healthily, getting a good night’s sleep, exercising, meditating and seeking wisdom from sources that you know and trust – you take action on strengthening the pillars that will see you through this storm. 

And since fear is an initiatory energy, taking action will channel that energy in a productive direction, giving it somewhere to go rather than stagnating inside of you. 

We can turn our focus to the basics of what it means to Feed Our Good Wolf and take care of ourselves and when we do, we have the resources we need to navigate these difficult times. 

I recently interviewed Mark Nepo for a second time (episode to be released soon) and he said something that struck me. He said, “we’ve become addicted to the noise of things falling apart.” 

He went on to point out that things are also always coming together, too. Often, the things that are coming together are just a lot quieter. So, it takes us pausing to notice those quiet things coming together.

As in so much of life, where we place our attention will determine our experience.

So, how do we pause and respond to fear when it hits us?

It’s important to know that fear is fed through our thoughts but it is FELT in our bodies. 

So if we continue to stoke the fire of fear by getting carried away by the trance of fear-based thinking, irrational panic can take over.

But if we can pause when we feel fear set in and really feel the feelings without feeding them, then they can move through us, releasing their grip on us so that we can contact what’s true, what’s in our Circle of Influence and what (if any) action we can take.

Since fear is fed by our thoughts and is largely future-oriented, it can be really helpful to drop out of the thinking mind and into the present moment.

Conveniently, the body and the breath are always in the present moment (and also always with you no matter where you are).

So here are a couple of practices you can turn to when fear really hits. 

The first comes from another recent podcast episode with guest Fleet Maul who introduced us to the practice of straw breathing. 

You can practice straw breathing with or without an actual straw. If you have one handy, great, but you don’t have to have one in order to practice it. 

Essentially, you take a deep breath in and then you exhale in a slow, controlled manner, as if through a straw. 

Anytime your exhalation is longer than your inhalation, it is a signal to your brain that you are not in a fight/flight/freeze state of danger and your limbic system can relax.

I’ll also offer you a grounding on-the-spot Spiritual Habit that you can turn to when you feel fear taking hold.

This Spiritual Habit won’t make the fear disappear, but it will open up more space inside of you, you won’t feel so possessed by the fear and you will have direct access to the present moment so that you can discern what’s present here and now vs. what is being imagined from a state of fear. From there you can move forward.

One of the things that all Spiritual Habits have in common is that they have a trigger or something that prompts you to practice them.

This Spiritual Habit’s trigger is anytime you notice you are caught in the trance of fear, the grip of fear or locked in fearful, ruminating thoughts:

First, pause. Notice and name the fear you’re experiencing. (“I’m feeling fear right now.”)

Next, place a hand on your belly and breathe into your hand so that your belly expands. Slowly exhale and as you do, sense your body and mind letting go of any tension and fear. 

Now, move your attention to feel where your feet touch the ground or where your seat meets the chair and feel supported by the earth beneath you. 

Then, sense where you feel any tension or tightness in the body and gently see if you can relax a bit in those areas, letting go and breathing into them. 

And finally, take just a moment to rest in this state of presence, in direct contact with that which is here now vs. being lost in the imagined future, and sense what has opened up inside of you, giving you some space between you and the fear you’re feeling. 

When you name the fear and sense that you are grounded and present, you become less gripped by and identified with the fear and more able to discern what the right action might be in the moment.

Bringing wisdom into the moments of your life and working with strong emotions are both things that I do as part of the Spiritual Habits Program.

In the 1-on-1 Spiritual Habits Program, I help people who have familiarity with spiritual principles like mindfulness, self-compassion or acceptance but can’t quite figure out how to consistently apply it all to their daily life to develop simple, actionable Spiritual Habits so they embody these principles and feel calmer, more at ease and more fulfilled on a daily basis.

To learn more about the 1-on-1 Spiritual Habits Program (and learn another Spiritual Habit for free) click here. 

Wishing you all inner stillness amidst outer chaos, 

Eric

It’s the end of January – has your motivation for your New Year’s resolutions started to dwindle yet?

If so, this post is for you.

If not, just wait – that moment is coming. It always does. And so this post is also for you.

I’m going to teach you what to do when motivation wanes (or dies completely) in order to keep your new habit alive, sustaining it for the long run.

The very nature of motivation is that it comes and goes. It waxes and it wanes. It ebbs and flows. It will be low to non-existent one moment and then back in full force not long after.

You know this from experience. Think back to any behavior you’ve changed or habit that you’ve started or stopped. There are moments when you’re very motivated and it propels you forward in the direction you want to go. You’re in a state of energy and flow and progress.

And then there are times when you can’t find a morsel of motivation anywhere and it takes the wind right out of your sails. It’s like you’re walking with concrete blocks on your feet. It’s hard, arduous and it feels like you’re pushing a boulder up a mountain.

If we rely on motivation alone to sustain a behavior, then that behavior will not last.

So what do we rely on to keep a behavior going over time?

In his new book, Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything, BJ Fogg teaches us exactly what to do in order to sustain a new habit or behavior.

(He and I discuss this in a recent podcast episode which came out a couple of weeks ago. If you haven’t listened to it yet, I encourage you to check it out when you have a moment. You can listen here or in your podcast player.)

BJ Fogg says, “A behavior happens when the elements of MAP (motivation — your desire to do the behavior; ability — your capacity to do the behavior; and prompt — a cue to do the behavior) come together at the same moment.”

He goes on to say, “…motivation and ability can work together like teammates. If one is weak, the other needs to be strong to get you [to take action]. In other words: The amount you have of one affects the amount you need of the other.”

This means that when your motivation is low, you need to make the behavior far easier to do.

The foolproof way to do this is to scale it way back and make the behavior tiny.

Remember, your goal is to keep the habit alive. If you do the behavior at all, you get an A+.

An example from his book: If your New Year’s resolution is to floss your teeth every day, then you have succeeded whether you floss all of your teeth or one tooth.

On days when your motivation is high, you might floss twice. On days when your motivation is nil, scale it way back, make it radically tiny and floss one tooth.

Your motivation will return and then you can floss all of your teeth three times a day if you want to. But on days when you just aren’t feeling the drive to do it at all, make the behavior tiny, floss one tooth and mark it down as a win.

So, here’s the question you need to consider:

How can you make your new habit or behavior radically tiny so that you can ride out the days when motivation is low, still doing the thing you’ve set out to do, thereby keeping the habit alive?

It’s a question worth thinking about because another principle of behavior change is to separate decision from action. Decide now what you’ll do on days when it feels really hard so that you don’t have to think about it in the moment when you are struggling for will power.

There are 2 other ways to make a behavior easy to do, according to BJ Fogg:

1. Increase your skills
2. Get tools and resources

One way to address each of these factors is to work with someone to level up your skills and add to your list of available tools and resources.

That is precisely what I do when I work 1-on-1 with clients in The One You Feed Personal Transformation Program.

Through weekly calls and daily email communication, I teach my clients how to apply the science of behavior change to their specific goals based on their unique life circumstances, ensuring their long term success.

To learn more about the program, click here.

To find out if the program is a fit for you, I offer a free 30-minute Personal Transformation Coaching Session. You can book your call by clicking here.

On this call, you will tell me about the changes you’re looking to make and I will offer you my thoughts on how you might go about doing this. If we’re a match to work together, that will be clear and I never pressure people on these calls. If the program is not right for you, we part as friends and you will have my ideas to consider as you move forward towards your goals.

I am going to be making some changes to how I work with private clients starting next month, so if you’re interested in The One You Feed Personal Transformation Program, go ahead and book a call with me.

As BJ Fogg says, “If you’ve attempted change in the past and haven’t seen results, you may have concluded that change is hard or that you stink at it. Neither is accurate. The problem is with the approach itself, not with you.”

Change your approach and you’ll change your results.

Wishing you well,

Eric

2020 is just weeks away. It’s a new year and a new decade so it’s a great big clean slate and a fresh start.

In this post, I’m going to teach you how to set New Year’s Resolutions that give you more joy, peace, fulfillment, and meaning in your life – at a deeper, more lasting level than what you might think is even possible.

To start, there are two types of New Year’s Resolutions.

First, there are New Year’s Resolutions based on what you think you should do. 

You think you really should eat healthier, you should exercise more, you should make more time for friends etc.

But those types of New Year’s Resolutions are short-lived.

Why?

Well, for one, the motivation for those “should” types of resolutions is extrinsic rather than intrinsic. The word “should” signals that it is coming from someone else’s voice rather than your own.

As Kendra Cherry writes for the website Very Well Mind:

“Extrinsic motivation refers to behavior that is driven by external rewards such as money, fame, grades, and praise. This type of motivation arises from outside the individual, as opposed to intrinsic motivation, which originates inside of the individual.”

Extrinsic motivation can be effective to get you started. But intrinsic motivation keeps the change going long term.

This leads me to the second type of New Year’s Resolution; one based on what you deeply want to do. These types of resolutions are rooted in what you value and therefore you are intrinsically motivated to take action on them.

Even more than fostering sustained change, tapping into and experiencing intrinsic motivation is the signal that you’re on a path towards living a life that feels more deeply rewarding, satisfying, full of meaning, joy, and personal growth.

You might be thinking that it sure would be helpful to have some sort of framework or exercise to guide you through figuring out what New Year’s Resolutions to make so that you experience this deep, lasting connection to what really matters for your life.

Click here for a quick but powerful exercise (created by Kelly Wilson) that will help you determine what you value, what truly matters to you at this point in your life and which of these areas needs some New Year’s Resolution type attention. In other words, you’ll discover how aligned your life is with those values. It’s really illuminating.

If you have been feeling adrift, this exercise will help you come back to shore. Your values can be the touchstone of your life, helping you to strengthen your sense of self, purpose, enjoyment, clarity, and strength.

Setting New Year’s Resolutions to help you live more according to your values will transform your life in the deepest way.

The bridge that connects you to a life that feels deeply satisfying, one that’s connected to a source of strength and inner peace is found in the behavior changes you’ll make to align these important value-based areas of your life.

What New Year’s Resolutions do you need to make? How do you go about making behavior changes in your life so that they are high in impact but low in the overwhelm factor? How do you structure your life and environment so that you are set up to succeed right out of the gates and also over time?

I can help you answer and take action on these questions.

During the month of December, I will be offering FREE 30-minute Personal Transformation Session  to discuss Values-Based New Year’s Resolutions. 

Click here to schedule yours. Spaces are limited.

Here’s what will happen during the call: You’ll share your New Year’s Resolutions with me as well as the biggest challenge you foresee in making these changes. I will then teach you how to overcome that challenge and I will also give you my #1 recommendation based on your values and goals to set yourself up to make the changes you want to make in this new year.

One thing I won’t do on this call? Hard sell you on signing up for the program. That is not my style – if we’re a fit to work together, that will be clear enough without some awful “hard close” to end our call. You have my word on that.

Spaces are limited so go ahead and click here  to book your free session.

If you want to learn more about The One You Feed Personal Transformation Program, click here.

I wish each of you every good thing as we move forward into this new year and new decade.

Remember, the best way to predict the future is to create it.

Eric

“If you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your family.” 

– Ram Dass

If what Ram Dass says resonates with you, then read on. This post is for you. 

In the United States, November marks the beginning of the holiday season. Our holiday, Thanksgiving, happens at the end of the month and it is all about being with family. 

Then, after Thanksgiving we all roll into the December holidays of Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Boxing Day, New Year’s Eve and the family gatherings continue. 

Spending time with family can be a dicey and difficult thing for so many people. It can also be a very good thing, but as with most things in life, it’s often a combination of being both challenging and rewarding. It would serve us well to enter this time with a better perspective and some helpful tools to use when we feel triggered.

In the Spiritual Habits course that I taught several months ago, we explored the topic of perspective as it relates to how we experience life and the world within and around us. 

We see things through a series of filters or perspectives. We can’t completely get rid of them and that’s ok, but it’s important to recognize that is what’s happening. 

Our perspectives are derived from our own moods, emotions, and beliefs (often generated by family experiences). When our perspective becomes small, fixed, rigid or narrow, we often experience suffering.

The key to not getting sucked into the negativity around us lies in our ability to get curious about, question and reframe our perspectives on things. 

There’s a saying in 12 step programs: Expectations are premeditated resentments. 

Taking that idea further, Dr. Albert Ellis taught that unhappy people tend to have 3 expectations: They expect they should always do well, they expect others should treat them well, and they expect life should go well.

Reflecting on the expectations we bring into the interactions we have with family over the holidays is a worthwhile exercise. 

Anytime you find yourself using the word “should” in this context, you’ve hit on an expectation and you may want to see how it’s serving you in that relationship.

Here are some examples:

• My mom should know that I hate it when she asks me why I haven’t found a nice person to settle down with.
• My sister should keep her kids quieter when we are all trying to have a conversation.
• My dad should stop focusing on all the things going wrong in the world and find something positive to talk about once in a while. 

Former guest of the show, Ruth King, says that nothing is personal, nothing is permanent and nothing is perfect. 

Meaning, we can really suffer when we get caught up in how dysfunctional or difficult our unique family can be. 

It’s helpful to remember that difficult family dynamics are a universal experience. People throughout time and around the world struggle with family dynamics and subsequent old, deep wounds. It’s not personal or unique to just you. It’s an experience of being human. 

Also, life is fluid and changing. That’s the very nature of life. You won’t always be stuck at that dinner table. You won’t always have to deal with the dynamics you’re dealing with. Things evolve. Impermanence is a law of nature. 

And lastly, nothing is perfect – at least in terms of how we might define “perfect”. Flaws and problems abound.

But here’s an even greater truth: Life doesn’t have to be perfect to be good.

This holiday season, we can examine our expectations and perceptions going into time with family. Then, with amended expectations and a few on the spot practices to turn to when things get stressful, we can touch back into the deeper wiser part of ourselves. This will allow us to respond rather than react, show up as the best version of ourselves, and ultimately, suffer less by creating a more positive experience.

Would you like some support in navigating the difficult terrain of family time during this holiday season? You can’t change or control other people but you can absolutely change the way you experience them and react to them. I can help you do that through The One You Feed Personal Transformation Program.

Book a free 30-minute call with me to see if we might be a fit to work together. We will put behavioral principles and ancient wisdom to work for you in really practical, actionable ways this holiday season so that you feel more open to receive the good that’s there and less hooked and caught up in the bad.

Having someone in your corner helping you process and plan through the perceptions and experiences you’ll encounter over the holidays can be transformative and lead to great personal growth for you.

Click here to book a call. 

Wishing you well,
Eric