Empowering people to make strengthening choices
I recently received a question from a student in my course “Become a Master at Conflict Management at Home or Work.” She asked, “How can I prevent my ego from getting in the way when my husband attacks me at the start of our conversation?” She went on to tell me that he snapped at […]
In my last post, I talked about the importance of setting boundaries to be clear about what you are and are not responsible for in your relationships. Awareness of boundaries is critical to protecting and taking care of yourself as well as respecting another’s agency and sense of self. In this article, I want to […]
I’ve been writing a lot about building relationships in these last several articles. Today I want to explore the practice of setting healthy boundaries. Not only do good relationships require empathy and caring for others but also taking care of ourselves or even sometimes protecting ourselves from others. I don’t mean protecting ourselves because others […]
Someone recently asked me what I lessons I have learned as I look back on my career. I thought about his question and realized that I would have asked for more mentoring and even emotional support. Many of us think that we have to go it on our own. Even during adversity, we think we […]
Empathy is awareness of others, what they are feeling or what life may be like for them. I like to think about two dimensions of empathy. One is perspective taking which is your ability to see something from another’s point of view. A second form of empathy is called empathic concern which is to feel […]
There is something powerful about recognizing our common humanity. By this I mean acknowledging that we, as human beings, share similar experiences. We are all imperfect and make mistakes. There is not a person alive who has not experienced suffering, stress, loss and pain. And we hold similar aspirations. We want to be loved, achieve […]
In my last article, I wrote about seeing people deeply. Today I want to explore a related concept, respect and how to create mutual respect. The dictionary defines respect as “to hold in high regard; to feel or show honor or esteem towards something or someone.” Although we think of respect as behaving in a […]
So often we look at people and even interact with them but we don’t really see them. This is something that the columnist David Brooks has talked about lately. He’s been alarmed by the growing isolation and social disconnectedness in our society in recent years. In fact, he’s said, “Many of our society’s great problems […]
