I have been very fortunate to have several exceptional coaches and teachers. I have noticed that they have a lot of things in common. They have a lot of trust in the success of their students. They attentively listen to us. They challenge our assumptions. They know how to engage us. They are very kind…
A Celebration of Life for my Friendship
I appreciate the Celebration of Life from the many U.S. traditions, customs and holidays. In the past, I perceived funerals as very sad and dark. I couldn’t see death as one of the happiest events in life as some tribes do. Both approaches addressing the end of life seem too extreme and too one-sided to…
27 Years of Silence and Estrangement
“I understood the life around me better, not from love, which everybody acknowledges to be a great teacher, but from estrangement, to which nobody has attributed the power of reinforcing insight.” – Nirad C. Chaudhuri When I was a child in Ukraine, I watched a TV program called “Find Me”. This program covered stories about…
Conflict and Creativity
“When we face our conflicts, invite our imagination to interact with them, and then give them up to the great space of Creativity itself, new ideas and insights burst forward unexpectedly.” – Diane Musho Hamilton For some of us, conflict and creativity don’t have anything in common from the first look. Indeed, if we have…
The Headless Way … “Present experience, whatever sense is employed, occurs only in an empty and absent head.” – Douglas Harding
“What you are now looking out of isn’t two small and tightly fastened “windows” called eyes but one immense and wide open “Window” without any edges; in fact you are this frameless, glassless “Window”. To make quite sure of this, you have only to point to the “Window” and notice what that finger is pointing…
Take in the good
In my previous blog I mentioned Rick Hanson, Ph.D. and his book ”Hardwiring Happiness”. Today, I will share with you Dr. Hanson’s HEAL steps and their benefits. You may expect positive results if you practice it several times a day. Dr. Hanson states: “By taking just a few extra seconds to stay with a positive experience –…
“The negativity bias is no our fault. We didn’t create it. Still, we can do something about it.” –— Rick Hanson, Ph.D.
There are ways to work with your brain and change it for the better through self-directed neuroplasticity. In his fascinating book ”Hardwiring Happiness”, neuropsychologist Rick Hanson, Ph.D. describes how the brain evolved a negativity bias for the survival of our ancestors, explains what negativity bias is, and relates how this bias affects our quality of life:…
“Having an environment that is supportive is really important for success” – Tory Burch
If you are contemplating changing something in your behavior or other aspects of your life, having a supportive environment is crucial. Some of the things that matter include your family and friends, other communities you are part of such as co-workers and fellow students, your pets, your reading, and events and activities. These things can…
“The capacity to learn is a gift; The ability to learn is a skill; The willingness to learn is a choice.” —— Brian Herbert
To help you learn new skills in the future, I’d like to invite you to reflect on a learning process through employment of the so-called “conscious competence” learning model. Let’s imagine this scenario: You’ve been feeling overwhelmed and stressed during the last few weekends and you don’t know why. You are at stage # 1, Unconscious…
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.” ——– Mark Twain
Some of you are probably wondering, “Why does she write about gratitude or courage instead of about conflict resolution?” Fair enough! We’ll get there one day, I promise. John Ford, my mentor, said something like this in 2010, “To resolve an interpersonal conflict [conflict between you and John Doe], you need to resolve an intrapersonal…
“Gratitude Is The Best Attitude” (author unknown)
Hello! This is my first blog post! I appreciate your checking it out. Recently, on July 4th, Independence Day (it couldn’t have been just any day, right?), I made a new resolution to blog once a week. My main goal is to share my knowledge, skills, strategies, resources, and professional experiences with all of you…
Harmonious Resolutions 
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