Yesterday at The Nook I met with a fabulous client who said to me, “I’m not sure what to worry about now”. She said it half joking. And half not. As with many jokes, there was a seed of truth, a little kernel wrapped up in a distracting joke. Karen is a gentle, soft-spoken engineer in her early 50’s. Like most engineers, Karen is very pragmatic and highly analytical.
Me time. Self Care. Down time. We hear this all the time, but what does it actually mean? How do we do it? Let’s look at the what, the why, and the how. Self-care is intentionally carving out time free of commitments and responsibilities to others. It is spending time fully engaged an activity or practice that will recharge your battery. It is not laundry and chores, catching up on
It’s OK to not be OK I was puzzling how to articulate the value of experiencing a range of emotions when Disney handed me the answer. This answer came via the new animated feature Inside Out. My kids have been referring to it as “The Emotions Movie”. In a fun and playful way, this film tackles the task of explaining the confusing, complex, sticky wonder of our emotions. How memories
The time came when Grace asked herself “what am I doing?” She was getting ready for a night out with friends and realized she would rather be at home reading. Grace did go out that night and quickly became bored and her focus drifted. “What’s wrong with me?” she thought “I’ve had these friends for twenty years.” That led to a light bulb moment for Grace – she was not
We’ve all felt it at some stage or another. It’s unpleasant. It’s uncomfortable. It has no redeeming factors. It’s the one emotion that I refer to as useless. Guilt keeps us stuck and it doesn’t help anyone. In fact it’s a pretty self-centered activity. As long as you’re focused on guilt, you’re prevented from seeing solutions and making amends. Let’s try an exercise. Fill in the blank: I
“It happens that I am going through a period of great unhappiness and loss just now. All my life I’ve heard people speak of finding themselves in pain, bankrupt in spirit and in body, but I’ve never understood what they meant.” “When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy. I would figure it out this or that way and run it down through my head
What’s a Generalist?! A song. A metro map. A Celtic knot. What in the world do these have in common? There’s a well-known spiritual song called Dem Bones. You’ve probably heard bits of it; Shin bone connected to the knee bone. Knee bone connected to the thighbone and on and on. It’s all connected. London’s underground subway system, the tube, is a tangle and jumble of many colored lines. It
Where’s your net? One week in November I found myself at Saint Timothy’s Anglican Church. A week later I was at Manor Road United Church. Come January, you could find me at the Anglican Church of St John the Baptist. In February it was St Vincent de Paul Catholic Church. I wasn’t having a faith crisis or sampling different doctrines. I was in the lucky role of delivering faith and
“It gets easier”. We seem to tell the sleepless parents of newborns that all the time. The truth? It does get easier. AND it gets more difficult. It gets different. Yes, for teens you’re not changing their bottoms & feeding them. But you may return to sleepless nights, lying awake worried about them. Babies may be loud, but they don’t talk back. And they certainly aren’t having sex or contemplating
Let the music move you There’s are reason that movie soundtracks are in a category of their own at the Academy Awards. Music has the ability to enhance every film scene. From award for the best original score to the best original song, music has the power to communicate through sound and incite emotion in the audience. It can scare us and soothe us. Uplift or distress—Music makes the moving
