Throughout the course of writing the blog Mindfulness and Psychotherapy, we have interacted around topics on mindfulness and forgiveness, grieving, meditation, medication, depression, stress, anxiety, self esteem, anger, and many more.

Here are the top 10 blogs for Mindfulness and Psychotherapy:

1. Refusing to Forgive: 9 Steps to Break Free
2. Feeling Grief Means Being Alive: 7 Tips to Help 
3. What Everybody Should Know About the Dangers of Meditation 
4. Depression: Medicate, Meditate or both? 
5. How Do We Forgive Ourselves? 
6. Trying to Fix Your Depression? You May Be Adding to It Instead 
7. Stress got you down? Try this tip to balance throughout the day 
8. Calming Your Distressed Mind 
9. 7 Ways to Mindfully Boost Self-Esteem 
10. When You Can’t Forgive: Hope is Not Lost

In following this blog, are there any topics that you haven’t seen covered that you would like?

As always, please share your thoughts, questions, and stories below. Your interaction here provides a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Every day as I’m walking holding my baby, without fail, somebody either I know or don’t know, no matter their race, class, or creed says to me “it all goes by so fast.” In my entire life, I have never heard a more consistent message. This message seems to arise again around mid-life when people begin to evaluate what they have done and the outlook on life is no longer how many years have I lived, but is now, how many years do I have left? Then, if we live long enough to where we’re looking back toward the end of life, lying on our deathbeds we again say, “wow, it all went by so fast, savor the moments.” When there is a phrase that is said this ubiquitously, it lets me know that this is a fairly universal experience and it’s time to listen.

Why do we lose sight that life is so temporary? Some might say that we have a fear of death so we block it out of our minds and without the awareness of death we lose sight of the preciousness of life. Others might say we just get caught up in our daily routines and stop seeing or pondering this miracle of life. Whatever the reason, we know it happens and it may take a death or a birth to remind us of the preciousness of life.  Here is a process I created and did a national research study around to help us cultivate more of these meaningful moments.

1. Object – Find a tangible or intangible object that has deep meaning to you. This could be a family heirloom, a spiritual object, a piece of nature, or even a memory of sometime passed.
2. Making Meaning – As you choose this object, remind yourself of the meaning it holds for you.
3. Mindful Check-in – Sit, stand, or lie down and bring your attention to your body and just see if you can be aware of how you’re feeling physically and emotionally in this moment. Then bring your attention to your breath, just noticing how this body breathes itself.
4. Connecting - Turn your attention to this object …
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Throughout our lives we’ve been interpreting and making meaning out of all kinds of events. Every even by itself is just an event, but the way we see it, the importance we give it, how it weaves into the fabric of our cells makes all the difference. This meaning that we make then goes on to affect how we interpret other things, it informs the choices that we make and the behaviors that we conduct.

For example, if I were to get pulled over by the police for speeding I might think “the world is out to get me” or “I need to slow down.” I may miss the possibility that this may have saved me from an upcoming accident. Some people say life is like a blank canvas, go ahead and paint your masterpiece. The problem with that statement is that life is not like a blank canvas because we bring all of our past experiences, woundings, traumas, and triumphs with us to the seat. If you were abused as a child that is going to have an effect on how you view and interpret relationships and the world. If you are a veteran who has just come back from war and saw some of your friends wounded or killed, that is going to affect how you make meaning of many different things in life. Many different forms of therapy ask us to shift the way we seeing things, have a different outlook on life. It’s not so easy.

However, it’s also important to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl, says that people can survive any experience if they learn to make a more positive meaning out of it. He says, “even the worst circumstance can be transformed by our minds.”  We do walk around the world shaped by our experiences and the meaning we give to events can have a dramatic effect on how we feel emotionally and physically.

So the practice is to become aware of the meaning we are giving events and think of our initial interpretation as one slice of a pie and then asking …

Human beings are social creatures and we really need one another for support and survival in this world. Back in the day it was called a clan or a tribe, now it’s called community or social networks. Too often in the midst of our relationships one person says or does something that offends another and a spiral of hurt and grievance begins between the two. People get so boiled over with anger inside and make a choice not to connect or make amends with the other because “they don’t deserve it.” What we’re missing in this picture is that this grudge, this boulder of anger we’re carrying within us, is actually hurting us! It comes in the form of tension, irritability, shallow breathing, increased heart rate, and stress. While it may be too difficult to just ‘let it go’ right now, it may be a good idea to begin to see it a different way.

I have seen it now a number of times. “What was the last thing I said to him before he went out the door” she said on the day her boyfriend was killed in a tragic accident. We’re heard a resounding cry of this during 9/11. Why does it take something so severe as death or threat of injury to bring us back to our senses to what is truly most important…our connections. Lying on his deathbed the successful entrepreneur turned to his counselor and said “I had it all wrong. It’s not about the money, it’s about who you love and how you love them.” We could take some lessons from those who are in the last round.

When reflecting on this topic, it makes me think of the people in my own life who are still alive. Life can be so fragile and while at times I can think that we’re all immortal and will live forever, reality informs me that we all come and go in this life. The truth is, we just don’t know when that will be.

In an earlier blog, Ronald Pies, M.D. said, “having problems means being alive”. I’d like to add to that, “having …