I was working with a client the other day, and she kept using the word “risk” when talking about new things that she wants to do, new things she wants to explore and how she wants to look at personal growth, and it started to make me think about why we use the word “risk” instead of the  "opportunity."

Why does something new and different have to be looked at as a risk as the default? I think this word has a negative connotation and why try something or even explore the possibilities in such a negative way in the beginning. I looked up the word "risk" so that I am clear on what it means, and here is what the Merriam-Webster dictionary said: The possibility of loss or injury. Someone or something that creates or suggests hazard.”

I then looked up the word “opportunity," and I like this definition much better. "A favorable junction of circumstances. A good chance for advancement or progress.”

It finally hit me, I think we want to explore new possibilities, try new things, but the minute something negative, the “what if’s” pop into our head we put the brakes on it and assume the worst, we automatically default to the “risks.” How sad that we let this dictate how we view new opportunities.

Isn’t that what we're doing is exploring new opportunities and what comes next for us. I like the idea of looking at it with a fresh perspective and not automatically defaulting to what could go wrong or the risks; I don't want that to drive or motivate me. I would rather stay in that place of being positive. Sure, there is a chance that something could go wrong, it doesn’t work out the way we want it to, but should that stop us from trying? After all, there are no guarantees, no absolutes, and at the end of the day, you never know what can happen. It could actually turn out pretty great and exactly what we want.

I would much rather see something as an opportunity rather than a risk.

Think about what’s getting in your way and what are you going to do about it? 

​​In Part 1 of this series, we talked about putting your own needs first in a relationship as well as the need for self-compassion. This post aims to explore exactly how we can begin to love and honor ourselves, with all of our imperfections.

Mother Teresa will be canonized as a saint in 2016. What makes her worthy of this title? It's her profound unconditional love to children and others in need, thought to be miraculous. 

Here is a theme I noticed with many of my single clients. They pick one situation, or one self-perceived flaw, zero in on it, and ask themselves, “who is going to want to be with me when”: 

• I am a single parent” 
• I am a caregiver for a sick parent” 
• “I am 10 pounds overweight”
• “I only make X amount of money”. 

I have also had clients who cannot attribute their feeling on diminished self-value to any one personal flaw other than the feeling of feeling unloved deep down in their core.  When the feeling of being unloved is combined with the impression that they are somehow deeply flawed, it can be a lethal cocktail for one's concept of self.

Self-Awareness 
Recognizing these negative core beliefs can be important in getting to the recovery stage. If you are seeking love outside of yourself, don’t be discouraged by the common adage “you have to love yourself first before you can truly love others.” It’s just plain wrong.  You can build up your inner strengths and feelings of worth and at the same time, actively date and pursue love in a partner and yourself.

Learning to love yourself can take many years of intentional effort, therapy, and practiced mindfulness. But it also might occur when you find the person who, when you look into their eyes, you see back a reflection of love. 

I am unlovable
“I am unlovable” is an example of a core belief, meaning you developed this idea of yourself in early childhood through messages you heard and accepted as true. Our parents and caregivers have the most influential role to play in shaping the thoughts we develop about ourselves. Other important people in our lives, such as teachers, siblings and coaches, also play a role in shaping our beliefs of ourselves and the world around us.

These core beliefs are not something we are typically aware of.  They manifest themselves every day in your choices and behaviors, and also through an inner dialogue we replay in our minds. It is apparent in thoughts like, “why bother, she’s never going to go for someone like me” or “there’s a reason why I’m 45 and still single, I may as well just give up”.

I am unworthy
Some people’s inner critics work overtime, constantly reinforcing the core belief that “I am unworthy”.  People with perfectionist tendencies tend to fall victim to this trap, because they hold themselves up to impossible and unrealistic standards in all areas of their lives.   People with core beliefs of unworthiness, often strive to achieve, driven by a belief that their value lies with their accomplishments, appearance, status, and the objects they surround themselves with, the Rolex on the wrist and the BMW 7 Series in the garage. These are all artifices that do not reflect the core of who we are. This cycle of acquisition and striving to achieve unreachable goals heighten their feelings of unworthiness.

Unconditional love
If you grew up in a household where there was abuse or neglect, or love was withheld, then knowing how to love yourself at your core will require intentional focus and work.

There is no magic formula to but there are a few questions you should ask yourself about your early childhood: 

• When you think back to your childhood, do you recall feelings of being nurtured, valued, and loved?
• Do you recall what you believed about yourself and the world?​

If these questions resonate with you, you should understand that blame and resentment towards parents, exes, and others often interferes with healing and growth. It’s important not to blame your family or others for everything that might be wrong in our lives, but rather to examine these relationships. Why do they make us feel this way? How does their attitude and behavior reflect on who I am as a person? 

Dating
When we are dating, which is often a time of uncertainty and vulnerability, we internalize the messages we receive.  Usually we remember the most negative ones, and completely disregard the positive. If you have core beliefs of unworthiness, then you are more likely to file these away as accepted truths, rather than see it as that person’s projection, often stemming from their own self-esteem issues. People who degrade and abuse others are likely struggling with these same beliefs of that they aren’t worthy of love. They bring others down to feel better about themselves,  through behaviors that are destructive to themselves and everyone that surrounds them.

When you can see this clearly and understand the impact negative messages have had on your life, you can distance yourself from the harmful behaviors and destructive habits they evoke. With clarity around the contributing factors that evoke feelings of low self-worth, we can proactively work towards positive change.

How do I learn to love myself?
You absolutely can challenge your inner critic. You know, the one that recycles and reinforces all the negative messages you internalized about yourself over the years.  We can strive to develop unconditional love in ourselves, the kind that doesn’t waver after a bad day or a big disappointment.  Here are some methods I love using with clients to help them feel this love:

Self-compassion
Dr. Kristen Neff is a student and researcher on moral development, author and meditation practitioner and teacher. You can find out more about her research on theories on self-compassion through her website or her book. 

Ask yourself, how can I develop self-compassion?  The idea of self-compassion is about objectively viewing yourself through the lens of your positive qualities as well as your shortcomings.  It is an awareness that we are part of a shared human experience, with all its strengths and flaws, and that we are all connected. When we take a minute to feel our pain, it is helpful to also recognize other’s pain, because we all have it. This can also help encourage and reinforce our own feelings of self-worth. We can build our self-compassion by understanding our place in the universe when we feel pain and suffering.

The practice of compassion is as simple as complimenting a friend on an accomplishment, saying you’re sorry when you bump into someone, smiling at a stranger, or looking a homeless person in the eyes and saying good morning. This outward expression of compassion comes a lot more easily to most people than self-compassion. The next step is to then ask yourself, this compassion I feel for X’s pain, can I develop that for myself?

In his groundbreaking meditation book, “Wherever You Go, There You Are,” Jon Kabbat Zinn recalls a story of the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama was perplexed about the concept of “self-esteem” when he heard a Western psychologist speak of it at a talk in 1990. After asking for the concept to be explained to him several times, he was sad to learn that so many in the Western World suffered from feelings of self-loathing and inadequacy.  What is it about our Western way of life and our expectations that make low self-esteem such an epidemic?  It may have to do with the way we chase happiness outside of us. We are destined to feel inadequate when we constantly compare ourselves to others, and measure our worth by what we have or don’t have.

Clarify your values
Who are you, at your core? Make a list of your values and your characteristics.  Strip away the ones that concern your appearance, status, personal achievements, and mistakes. Do you value kindness, justice, and humility?  Do you value loyalty, curiosity, forgiveness, or humor?  Have some of the hardships you have experienced made you stronger? How so?  Ask yourself- what makes me feel the most beautiful?  Which of my qualities make me feel capable and strong?  

Challenge your thinking
In times of distress, we can develop some pretty negative thoughts. These thoughts occur automatically, and usually we don’t even realizing they are occurring. These patterns of thought can take over and distort our vision of the world.  Click here for a List of these common thinking patterns. If you have ready examples, try the following:

1)  Identify your automatic thought. i.e. I feel so rejected. He hates me. She has ruined my life. I’ll never 
    find someone as smart, funny, or who “gets” me as much.
2) Identify the unhelpful thinking pattern (i.e. are you mind reading, predicting, emotionally reasoning)?
3) Think of a more balanced and reasonable response. i.e. No one can ruin my life. I will recover from 
    this and look forward to new opportunities.

Even though…. Nevertheless (Be like the Dalai Lama)
According to the principles of self-compassion, to achieve a balanced view we must accept the good with the bad. To do this, we must also stop making sweeping judgments about ourselves and our appearance, skills, or social standing. Like the Dalai Lama, we must avoid the trap of social comparison, a game that no one ever truly wins at.  

Try it yourself: Even though (external event that has happened) Nevertheless, (some statement of worth).

I hope this helps the courageous part of you kick your fear to the curb, where it belongs. Love is a feeling, and it evolves and grows over time. Consider these practices and commit daily to loving yourself and you will start to see opportunities for more love out there in the world for you.  You are strong and you are loved. 
​
Stay tuned for the next post in this series, which will be about how to know whether to hang on or walk away from a relationship.

​

Now that we are a couple of weeks into the new year, some of us may find that our goals are already fading. The key to making behavioral changes is taking small steps. However, our mindsets also play a bigger role than we realize. A positive mindset gets us much further.  
 
In my years of practicing therapy, I’ve discovered that people can sometimes be oblivious to the ways that they are sabotaging themselves simply by the way that they think! 
A classic example is when we slip up and order french fries instead of a salad with dinner and then say to ourselves, "What the heck, I already ruined my diet so I may as well order the flourless chocolate cake for dessert!" And to make matters worse, there’s also a little something called a “negativity bias” we have to deal with.

Psychologist, Dr. Rick Hanson describes the negativity bias in this way: bad experiences stick like "Velcro,” while our positive experiences are more like "Teflon.” Neuroscience shows us that we must consciously, and with focused intention, reframe our thoughts to think positively. Once we recognize our negative thinking about ourselves, we can make space for all the other possibilities. What we think, we become. It’s a good thing we can also choose our thoughts. When we practice this over time, we can rewire our brains to think more optimistically and positively! So, as we move into 2020, remember to take baby steps, and always strive to maintain a positive frame of mind.
​
​

Kerrie Mohr, LCSW
A Good Place Therapy & Consulting
www.agoodplacetherapy.com

Saying yes....

Life is constantly calling you- forward, onward, upward into growth and inward to greater depths. Everyday, in large and small ways, you are being asked to step into a stronger, clearer, more grounded relationship with yourself and the world around you. There are things to let go of that are blocking your path, dimming your light, holding you back. The ever-present shadows of fear- you might get cold, wet, or embarrassed in your new soft skin of vulnerability. Step into the water anyways. Open up to infinite possibilities and the power of letting life flow through you...

It took me two years to launch this website. I had every excuse in the book- I'm not a technologically gifted person, I don't want to limit my work or make it somehow less true in a virtual format, I don't have time, I could be criticized, I might fail. Yet, again and again students, friends, and family would gently say - is there someway we could take your classes online, you could help a lot of people, Valarie you have so much to give. So finally, I dropped my pretense and procrastination and I decided to step into the water...

It's true that you might get cold, and if you are out there fully living life you will most certainly get wet on some days. But just beyond your warm, dry comfort zone is a new perspective, a fresh and fierce cleanse, a dip into the river that changes the course you are on and connects you to the larger currents of the universe...

Say yes.

​​Illness ... A hypochondriac's worst nightmare or dream come true? The freedom of illness
 
When you hear the words, “you have cancer,” even though you have been mentally preparing for what seems like an eternity, you are still flooded with shock and emotions. Your knees turn to jelly as you wonder if you will survive and how you will break the news to your loved ones. How do you react?
 
Is it joy? “I KNEW IT - ALL THIS TIME I WAS RIGHT!!”
 
Relief? “PHEW!! It’s about time that the thing I’ve been worried about for the past 20 years came true.”
 
Sadness - “Woe is me, I’m the unluckiest person in the world.”
 
Anger - “ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME?”
 
Fear - “OMG, I am totally going to die.”
 
Resentment - “Why me? Why the fuck me?”
 
Empowerment - “You’ll never get me, cancer - screw you!!”
 
Ultimately, it is a combination of ALL of the above emotions. It’s strange how hypochondriacs actually use their fear of illness as a protective shield: “if I constantly think that I’m ill … when I do get ill, it won’t be such a shock, and I will be PREPARED, dammit.”
 
It’s funny how the mind works. After my personal cancer diagnosis, I felt a strange relief and freedom from the day-to-day stresses. If the worst has finally happened, then things can’t get worse, right? Tears do fall. But fears also melt away. Relief and joy that the thing that has been holding you back; holding you captive in some psychotic abusive relationship / Stockholm Syndrome scenario, can’t get you anymore. You are, all at once, captive and free, bound to no one and everyone through the strange Jedi mind tricks of cancer. Freed at last by the thing that you feared most in your life - your captor.
 
 
​By: Julie Jarratt

I will admit, I used to wake up every morning, and before I got out of bed, the first thing I did was check my phone. I checked for the latest news updates, I checked social media, and my email, even though I didn’t respond to anything, and I checked the weather (and I can very quickly ask Alexa for that, so I had no excuse).
 
I had to stop doing this. It wasn’t helping me start my day or even productive to read news updates first thing in the morning. I also stopped watching the news first thing in the morning. I realized I didn’t want to start my day that way and as we all know, it will change in a couple of hours.
 
Do you find yourself tethered to your phone, can’t imagine being without it, and forget about actually going out without it for even 30-minutes? What’s wrong with this picture, why have we become so dependent on this device to get us through the day, to provide us with all the latest news, keep us up-to-date with the latest trends, stay connect with people by scrolling through their most recent status updates, pictures, and worrying we have missed out on something. Is this really what this has all come down to? What happened to our face-to-face conversations, actually connecting with people and spending time together? Can’t we get all of our updates by just talking to each other?
 
I hear so many of my clients talk about how distracted or even addicted they are to the news and how it's affecting them emotionally. They hate getting all the news alerts because it is going to change in a couple of hours, but they want to stay connected. I have challenged my clients to limit their news intake, uninstall the news apps from their phone or at least turn off the alerts if they don’t want to go without access completely.  The thought of not having a news app on their phone is daunting for some and welcomed by others. I know that limiting my news intake has helped me in so many ways. I set the boundary for myself that I don’t start the day with MSNBC or CNN, and I don’t check the news before I go to bed. If I get an alert on my phone during the day, I don’t read it and move on with my day.
 
I was recently on a trip to Dublin and during my trip, I didn’t watch the news, I didn’t check it on my phone, I rarely checked Facebook, and I didn’t miss out on anything. It took the pressure off me to stay so connected, and I gave myself permission to do this, which was the best thing I could have done for myself. I highly recommend you try this.
 
Have you ever considered cleaning up your digital life/workspace?

• Clear away any unnecessary apps?
• Conduct an audit of what is installed on your phone, your tablet, computer, etc. What’s necessary to be there and what are the distractions?
• Have you ever tried going 24-hours without your phone? What about 1 hour? If the thought terrifies you, maybe this is why you should try it.
• Are you so addicted to your phone that you take it into the bathroom with you?

 
 
Ask yourself, are you ready to change your relationship with technology?

​​Do you really listen to yourself, the true you, your inner voice, or do you listen to what others have imposed upon you? Or do you only listen to this inner voice when something happens in your life - an illness, loss of a job, a death, a divorce, a breakup, or some other transition in your life?
 
Most of us don’t do “self-exploration” on a regular basis or at all. We don’t take the time and even more, sometimes we are afraid of this because we’re scared of what we might discover about ourselves.
 

​So, instead of waiting for something to happen that forces us to do this “self-exploration or “self discovery,” what about incorporating this into your life as a regular practice.
 
Let’s get this process going and you can start by asking yourself the following questions:

• Who are you?
• Where are you in your life?
• Why are you the way you are?
• What adjectives would you use to describe yourself?

 
Go ahead, discover the person you want to be. 

If you’re looking for a new job or happily employed, there are moments in your professional life when you feel immobile, despite  your best efforts. Here are a few pointers for getting unstuck.

MARIKONDO YOUR LIFEIn the bestselling book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, Marie Kondo suggests getting rid of anything that doesn’t spark joy. This, of course, pertains to not only your house, but to your career. What can you declutter from your resume, office, and desktop—virtual or physical? This concept also translates into professional commitments. What activities can you stop doing, improve upon, or delegate?

ALWAYS BE CLOSINGAs Alec Baldwin’s character asserts in the 1992 film Glengarry Glen Ross, always be closing. How does this pertain to the information fields, you ask? Think about projects and tasks that you can finish. What has been lingering on your to-do list that you’d love to complete? Then commit your time to finish it. Assign yourself one task that you will prioritize for the day. Focus on it with Jedi-like precision, and you will feel the victory of progress.

FEEL THE PAIN What action are you dreading? Do it before all others. Often it’s just a matter of getting started. Use the Pomodoro technique; many free apps are available. Using a timer, work for 25 minutes with a five-minute break. For particularly heinous tasks, promise yourself that you only have to do one Pomodoro’s worth of work. Once you start, you’ll usually want to continue. Even if you don’t, you’ll be surprised by how much was accomplished during that period of constant activity.

PROCRASTINATE LIKE A CHAMP Or do the opposite and harness the power of procrastination. If you have something that you must do, put it off by accomplishing smaller tasks. Keep track of your to-do list with the role-playing productivity game Habitica (a personal favorite) or good old-fashioned pen and paper. While the main activity won’t get done until later, you’ll do all the things you needed to do anyway while whittling away your excuses for not focusing on your primary task. When the other responsibilities are done, your only choice will be to work on your main assignment. 

REACH OUT Be a person of action, and think about ways in which you can re-engage with the field.  What book, podcast, or blog post should you check out to keep up with the profession? Attend the next professional event in your area. Sometimes institutions host tours of their facilities or overviews of their projects. Often they are organized by local professional associations, but you can go on personal tours if you reach out to someone at the organization. You’ll be surprised by the generosity of your fellow librarians and archivists.

MINE SOCIAL MEDIA Search LinkedIn for career information. Look at people with jobs you’d like to have. What have they done that you can replicate? If you find someone in particular who has a path that interests you, ask them about their career trajectory. Research organizations with positions or departments that appeal to you. Follow them on social media to get updates on their activities and to find ways to engage with them. 
​
WRITE PROFESSIONALLY Contact journals for book review opportunities. Many journals are looking for reviewers, and the requirements for entry as a reviewer are low. You’ll be reading what you should be reading anyway, for free, and will contribute to the profession by offering your opinions on the topic. Contribute to a blog or start a blog yourself. And don’t forget to consider writing for LinkedIn! That’s how I just got unstuck.

What do you do to get unstuck?