The number one response: self-confidence.

I’ve never met anyone who didn’t value self-confidence. I’ve rarely met people who wouldn’t want more self-confidence.

Over the years, I have discovered a key to growing self-confidence like a great little vine.

Pruning.

That’s right. You grow self-confidence by trimming back expectations, setting limits on yourself and defining core areas of competence.

For example, when I was a young and nervous counselor, I thought I should be able to successfully work with anyone, with any condition, who walked in my door. I took on every case, no matter what, and often found myself over my head, running to my supervisor for help, a nervous wreck.

Over time, I learned that there are some populations, regardless of my level of experience, with which I am not cut out to work. I learned the art of referring. I learned to pass on cases outside of my focus areas of expertise.

I learned to prune my expectations.

As I trimmed and pruned, my self-confidence as a practitioner grew. Now, I understand the specific issues I can work with successfully and have the right amount of confidence for me.

For confidence to overflow, the container must be the right size. If you think you should be able to accomplish anything, in any situation, you are setting yourself up. The reality is, you have talents unique to you. And there are plenty of areas of life in which you probably have no business pretending you are confident.

Discover your talents. Focus them. Let go of performance expectations outside those areas. Then, within your high confidence areas, prune your expectations further to make sure your feet are on the ground.

When your self-confidence vine is pruned, it is free to grow in the right direction, vibrant and full of life.

Of course, the deeper enemy to self-confidence is the Great Glitch in human nature, in which you set yourself up ahead of time for self-doubt, even when you are competent. Read more about the confidence Glitch here.

Which expectations do you need to trim so that your confidence can grow?

If you like this post, like my Facebook Page to keep up with all my writing.

Crave Intimacy and Avoid it at the Same Time? Yes You Can!

is a reminder that craving intimacy does not necessarily mean that we really want it – or that we want it fully.

So often we crave closeness, then reject it once we have it, quickly to returning to a state of loneliness and isolation, only to crave closeness once again.

The question is, do your behaviors support the desire for intimacy, really? Or do you do things that push people away, leaving you isolated and lonely, as if attached to a state of craving?

Today I am going to make a list of the things I do that push people away, or fail to invite them to be close to me. Then, I’ll be able to create more opportunities to be close to my loved ones.

A hiccup of evolution?

Perhaps God installed the Great Glitch to keep us humble or make us miserable on this earthly plane.

Call it what you will, the Great Glitch of human nature is with us and making us miserable a good deal of the time.

What is it?

The Great Glitch is the pervasive tendency to do the opposite of what makes you happy.

Often, we justify these self-sabotaging actions and resist any attempts to change them.

At times we even find a strange satisfaction in the displeasure of the Glitch – as if it justifies us, keeps us safe, allows us to feel at home in that old familiar place of personal misery.

Here are some examples of the Glitch in action:

Pointless and destructive self-criticism. You criticize yourself “just because.” You call yourself stupid, an idiot, or a loser when you make even the smallest mistake – and you cannot stop.

You feel scared or guilty or bored when you begin to make progress in life or become happy – so you return to misery.

When you think of what you want, you tell yourself that you can’t have it.

When you think of what you want, you tell yourself you don’t deserve it.

When you think of what you want, you feel ashamed for wanting it.

When someone nice wants to be close to you, you push them away.

When someone mean wants to be close to you, you invite them in.

When you try to get healthy, you feel an overwhelming desire to do unhealthy things.

And so on…

Don’t these patterns come from childhood and not some “glitch?”

Yes, glitchy behavior in which you unwittingly sabotage your happiness stems from what you learned in childhood. You had bad role models who had bad roles models, who also had bad roles models, all the way back to the pond.

You also left the comfort of the womb and entered a much colder world that, comparatively, is full of deprivation, control and rejection. Even the best parents can’t compete with the shock of that.

The Glitch is the reality that virtually every human being ends up with symptoms of self-sabotage. We don’t have a built-in mechanism to protect us from it. It’s a flaw and no one is immune. By the time we are conscious of ourselves, it is too late.

How to heal the Glitch.

The only way to heal the Glitch is to learn about it – to see it for what it is and begin to make choices that diminish it. Healing the Glitch is a matter of expanding your awareness so that we understand what is going on – so that we get how and why we are doing what we do. Only then can we make a conscious choice to heal.

You cannot make choices over that which remains outside your awareness.

Toward this end, I have started a brand new website, the Great Glitch. The purpose of it is to explore, heal and laugh at the Glitch. We need some relief.

If we do not understand and accept these, then we will have a shallow, unhealthy relationships that make us miserable.

Are you ready to hear them? Here we go! I will speak boldly because I know the following applies to me as well…

1. Your partner has a different perspective that is valid.

How much time and energy do you spend trying to convince your partner that you are right? Most people in relationships are engaged in a power struggle over who is right and who is wrong. During this power struggle, true understanding and connection is lost.

Would you rather be right or be connected to your partner? Would you rather win a fight or be happy together?

Giving up the right/wrong and win/lose paradigm is a step toward a mature and healthy connection.

2. You are not entitled to everything you want.

You’ve made a conscious choice to live with another human being. This human being is a separate person with separate desires. Sometimes your partner’s desires do not match yours.

To remain connected in a healthy way, you will need to honor your partner’s desires a good deal of the time. Are you mature enough to make the sacrifice, or do you think you are entitled to have everything you want? Are you OK with your partner making sacrifices, yet do not expect yourself to make any?

What’s more important, getting what you want all the time, or being happy with the person you love?

3. Your partner is not your parent.

Your partner is not required to put up with your foul moods, bad habits, gross jokes, laziness or even your inner child, for that matter.

So many of us expect our romantic partners to care for us as a parent. Actually, some people require the kind of “unconditional” acceptance that even parents don’t offer. Nothing kills romance faster than this expectation.

“But if she loves me unconditionally, then she should accept whatever mood I am in, shouldn’t she?”

No. She loves you, but didn’t sign on to be more accepting than your mother. Your partner expects and deserves to be in a relationship with the adult you, the one who is capable of emotional maturity, respect and reciprocity. Anything less than this is heading down the road to misery.

Refusing to acknowledge and work with these three realities sets couples up for failure. The best-case scenario occurs when both parties understand them and work toward honoring them.

Many adults in relationships understand these concept intellectually, yet sabotage the relationship anyway. Self-sabotage in relationships may be the number one cause of break ups. To learn more about how you may be unwittingly sabotaging yourself, watch this free video.

If you liked this article, then like my Facebook Page to keep up with all of my writing.

During the May 15, 2013 episode of Mental Health Exposed, Paris tells his personal story of mental illness, recovery and a new paradigm in mental health.

Not many people on this earth have experienced psychosis, recovered, then gotten a doctorate in psychology and written books.

Paris is uniquely qualified to lead us into a new way to conceptualizing mental illness and recovering without the stigma, drugs, abusive “therapy” and lack of hope that so many experience as a direct result of modern mental health practices.

Download the May 15, 2013 episode of Mental Health Exposed and begin to understand the possibilities for true healing.

Myths of modern mental health

As a prelude to his research outlined in his book, Rethinking Madness, Paris reviews with me the common myths associated with mental illness.

Here they are:

Myth #1: Schizophrenia is a brain Disease
Myth #2: “Schizophrenia” is a valid construct
Myth #3: People cannot fully recover from schizophrenia
Myth #4: Mainstream psychiatric treatment greatly increases beneficial outcomes

Paris is living proof that the above are indeed myths. Don’t miss this episode of Mental Health Exposed.

A call to mental health practitioners

It is indeed time for a new paradigm in mental health: one in which we, above all, stop overreacting to the idiosyncrasies or even crises of the mind and begin to simply search for healing opportunities. In my opinion, every “disorder” of the mind is a healing opportunity that needs to be explored, not “fixed.”

We don’t need to be fixed because we were never broken to begin with. Most of us have been hurt, betrayed, traumatized or deprived of what we need, but NONE of this has broken us. We need to be patient and curious – as hard as that may seem – so that we can learn the deeper mysteries of the mind and bring about healing.

The existing mental health system simply does not allow for this possibility. Labeling people with disorders and drugging them does not allow for healing or even a valid exploration of problems. This is why interviews with great thinkers and healers like Paris Williams are so important. We all need what they have to offer. So, the May 15, 2013 episode – listen!

Analyzing data from nearly 5000 participants, with a follow up at 10 years, researchers have scientifically established what most people know intuitively. If your relationships are bad, your mood is likely to follow.

New information coming out of the University of Michigan makes the link. “Our study shows that the quality of social relationships is a significant risk factor for major depression,” says psychiatrist Alan Teo, MD, of the University of Michigan. “This is the first time that a study has identified this link in the general population.”

Relationship strain, feelings of isolation in relationships, a lack of support and other issues among spouses, families and friends contribute to depression. It isn’t the quantity of relationships that is important, according to the research, but the quality.

The quality of your relationships is a determining factor in your mental health

“The magnitude of these results is similar to the well-established relationship between biological risk factors and cardiovascular disease,” Teo says. “What that means is that if we can teach people how to improve the quality of their relationships, we may be able to prevent or reduce the devastating effects of clinical depression.”

What can you do to improve the quality of your relationships and increase your mood? Here are some ideas:

Forget your mood and focus on your relationships

Which are the most important relationships in your life? What is wonderful about them? What is missing? What steps can you take to improve them, beyond passively wishing that other people will magically change?

Learn real relationship skills

Do you know how to take another person’s perspective? Do you understand how to look at a relationship from a neutral perspective? Do you know your preferred way to receive love? Do you know your partner’s? Do you know how to mediate a conflict when you are in the midst of one?

Most of us do not have great intuition about these things. Most often, we assume other people should give love in the precise manner that we like to receive it. Most people assume that they should defend themselves with solid information when attacked. Most people assume the words they say are the most important aspects of the relationship. These assumptions are all dead wrong, even damaging to relationships.

Get some relationship skills! My professional bias is toward NLP or neuro-linguistic skills, but any conscious study is usually beneficial.

Beware of self-sabotage in relationships

The number one destroyer of relationships, in my experience working with people, is self-sabotage.

Beyond pure relating skills, self-sabotage is the number one issue in relationships. Most sabotage is done unconsciously, which is why it is imperative to expand your awareness? Do you unwittingly sabotage your relationships? Here are just a few signs that you do:

1. You don’t express your needs
2. You take on more than your fair share of the burden
3. You resist accountability to your partner
4. You act like a child that needs supervision
5. You annoy your partner and encourage rejection

There are hundreds of signs that you are sabotaging your relationship, most of them leading to feelings of being controlled, deprived or rejected.

For your relationship to last – or more importantly – to be peaceful and happy, you must address the unconscious patterns of self-sabotage. To learn more about self-sabotage, watch this free, 20-minute video.

It is now firmly established that the health of your relationship is tied directly to your mental health. Guard it with care.

If you like this article, please like my Facebook Page to keep up with all my writing.

An unhealed mind cannot be happy. In fact, an unhealed mind is hell-bent on misery.

Noticing the following signs of an unhealed mind is a positive step toward change.

Do the following signs apply to you? If you can see them in your life, then you already have a leg up! Be warned: I speak boldly about these issues. I can speak freely because I am not afraid to admit that they also apply to me.

Five signs of an unhealed mind

1. Mental and emotional misery

You experience mental commotion, self-criticism, runaway thoughts, bad habits, anxiety, depression, self-loathing and more. Your mind and emotions seem to operate on autopilot, out of your conscious control. Depending on your level of neurosis, your mind can feel like a psychic torture machine created just to make you miserable.

2. You experience your suffering passively

You do not see yourself as the source of all the suffering. Or, if you do see yourself as the source, you do not have the power or self-control to do anything about it. You remain a helpless victim – as if something were being done to you, rather than by you.

3. You are blind to the cause of your suffering

You seem to attribute your suffering to almost everything but the actual cause, which has never occurred to you and would shock and anger you if someone put it to you straight.

Worse, you may be convinced that your suffering is caused by people or circumstances that could never cause it. You may blame your spouse, your parents, your boss, your kids or your neighbor. You may blame “life” or God or your lack of education or opportunity. You may blame yourself; your inadequacy or inferiority. None of these  is capable of causing the kind of suffering your experience within yourself, yet these are the common “causes” people find.

4. You resist solutions

When real solutions present themselves, you turn them away or even allow them to upset you. To outsiders, it appears as if you don’t want solutions to your suffering, as if you were more content to suffer than to be happy.

5. You just can’t stop

You can’t get a handle on yourself. You know you are suffering, but can’t stop doing what you are doing. The results are feelings of anxiety and depression, hopelessness and helplessness – and eternal frustration.

Keys to healing

You need to educate yourself about how the mind and emotions work. This free video is a great place to start. I am not talking mechanics here, or cognitive behaviorism, but the underlying motivation for clinging to misery.

You must understand why your mind is bent on torturing you. When you begin to see the underlying reasons why you are attached to misery, only then you can begin to make real progress.

Your downfall is impatience. Because you are suffering, you want a magic bullet to make it all go away immediately. Unfortunately, there are a lot of personal development shysters in the world who will promise you that this is possible. You set yourself up for disappointment and failure when you believe these people.

Do the five signs apply to you?

To learn more about how underlying attachments sustain the unhealed mind by creating self-sabotage, watch this free video.

If you enjoyed this article, please like my Facebook Page to keep up with all of my writing.

In fact, it is more complicated to escape the present moment than to be in it.

The problem is, we are naturally complicated!

We learn early in life to avoid the simplicity of the moment and live inside an entangled mind-mess.

So, back to basics!

We connect to the present moment through our five senses. In this article, we’ll review simple ways to use three of your senses to sweep away the mind-mess and just be present. No drama. Just present.

The trick is to avoid making meaning. When you make meaning, you must go inside your mind. It is so easy at that point to make meaning that is emotionally upsetting.

All of us need a break from the internal commotion.

Accessing the External Present by Seeing, Hearing and Feeling

For me, the external present is the break I need. It is so calm and mundane – no mind chatter, no worry about the future, no regret, no problem. We cannot spend all of our time aware of the immediate now, but spending some time here every day is extraordinarily calming.

The key to getting really calm is to pay attention to the consistent and mundane. We can do it by listening, feeling and seeing in particular ways. Here are some examples. Do not just read….do!

Listen: Choose white noise and tune in fully. The sound of a fan. The hum of the refrigerator. The sound of running water, such as when you are in the shower. Mundane, consistent white noise is what you want.

Tune in, just listen and do not try to relax – just tune in to the sound. After a few seconds, you will feel yourself “settle.” Research has proven that this settling is related to your brain’s Default Mode Network (DMN). It switches off when engaged in this kind of conscious task. The DMN is the brain’s autopilot – which is commonly called the “inner commotion machine.”

Feel: Feel textures and temperatures in your immediate environment. The feel of the texture of your clothing on your skin. Feel the temperature of the table, or something cool. Feel the rough texture of your blue jeans against the back of your hand.

Put all of your attention on the feeling and forget everything else. You should experience the same settling after a few seconds. When you settle, you have arrived in the calm of the here and now!

See: See patterns, shapes and textures. Don’t see “what” things are. See how they are. Textures, shapes and patterns are everywhere! When you look at your house, see the texture of the siding. See the overall shape of the home and the pattern or texture in the brick, stone or stucco, for example.

The visual is more complicated because we are so used to labeling things, making meaning out of them and getting lost in that meaning. However, when you simply see patterns, shapes and texture, you see the world differently – much calmer.

I hope you found this article useful. If the exercises were mildly beneficial, then you might want to investigate the iNLP Center Tame the DMN stress relief program, which takes further steps to clear mind clutter and expands on these methods to enter the present moment. Click here for more information.

If you like this article, then like my Facebook Page to keep up with all my research and writing.

By the time my grandfather was 74, he lived with oxygen tubes taped to his face, but still made space for a few cigarettes every day. The man simply had no give in him. He loved smoking more than he loved the possibility of living 10-20 years longer.

One by one, they fell. I can count at least 12 men in my family, including my father, who died a painful, willful, stubborn death caused by a consciously negligent lifestyle.

Interestingly, they were married to women who participated in their demise.

In each case, the wives complied with their husbands’ demands for cigarettes, booze and piles of food, even after being warned by doctors about the dangers of continuing on the current path. Dutifully, they bought the smokes, brought home the booze and prepared the bowls of ice cream. These men never had to get out of the easy chair to fetch their own poison.

People in my family didn’t talk about interpersonal stuff, so I will never know what really went on in everyone’s mind, but as a counselor (I am the oddball in the family) I have witnessed a similar dynamic dozens of times: Impossibly stubborn and rigid men who insist upon living in unhealthy ways on the one side, and women caretakers who indulge them on the other.

The dynamic changes, however, when a caretaker gets fed up and stops indulging the counterpart.

It’s tough. As soon as a devoted caretaker refuses to fetch the beer, bake the cake, buy the cigarettes or sit around and watch TV all night, the relationship becomes strained. Seriously strained. Moreover, some caretakers are 100% financially dependent upon a stubbornly unhealthy soul and simply do not have the courage to rock the boat.

When it comes down to it, if the relationship is already lacking commitment and emotional connection, rocking the boat is incredibly uncomfortable. In most cases the caretaker needs to figure out ahead of time how he or she will deal with the worst-case scenario, which would mean the end of the relationship, before committing to a corrective course of action. This is no easy choice.

However, if there is genuine love and connection in the mix, there is a significant amount of leverage.

I won’t help you die any longer…

One woman in an otherwise healthy and committed marriage came to me wondering how to draw the line with her husband. He insisted on fatty, deep-fried meals, and beer or wine nightly. For years, she’d made him meals separate from her own, avoiding the incessant criticism and complaining she had to endure when she refused to cook what he wanted.

Finally, through our work, she realized she loved him too much to continue to indulge his unhealthy desires. She vowed to stop. Her message to him was:

I love you and will no longer help you die sooner than you have to. So, if you want fried food, alcohol and dessert, you can go get it or make it for yourself. I won’t help you eat that stuff any longer. And if you bring it home, I won’t eat in the same room as you. If you order it in a restaurant when I am with you, I’ll sit at a different table. I’m simply not going to participate any longer. You are too important to me. Now, do what you want, but I’d love to cook healthy meals and eat them with you.

She wept in her resolve to stop indulging this man. She really did love him and stuck to her guns. Eventually, he came around. What man can resist love like that?

Actually, a lot of men can resist it. Many men spew forth criticisms and abuse when they stop getting what they want. They retaliate in a variety of passive aggressive ways. Some even threaten suicide. There really are people more stubborn than death. The statistics prove it. Millions would rather die than give up their unhealthy addictions.

Yet, that still leaves the caretaker with the choice of whether or not to participate in their partner’s demise. Isn’t it better to offer healthy choices and refuse to comply with a death wish?

Some contend that by merely raising this issue I am suggesting it is the caretaker’s responsibility to create change. This is not true. If you are a caretaker of a stubborn soul who refuses to change, you merely have the choice whether or not to indulge bad behavior. By refusing to indulge, you invite change. That is all you can do.

If you appreciate this article, please like my Facebook Page to keep up with all my writing.

In this post I’d like to share my top 10 self-damaging things we tend to say to ourselves. I have my own experience with negative self talk, believe me!

One tool for overcoming negative self-talk is to call it what it is. I’ll say more about that in a minute. Here is my list of the top ten things to avoid saying to yourself.

1. I’m not worth it.

This is a direct assault on your self-esteem and it is simply not true! Telling yourself you are not “worth it” only perpetuates negative beliefs you may have picked up early in life.

2. There’s no use.

Telling yourself there is no use steals your personal power and leaves you with no motivation.

3. I can’t do it.

Again, very disempowering. There are times when you truly cannot do something, however, most of the time this one is delivered as more of a self-attack than a statement of fact.

4. I’ll never follow through.

This is a set up for failure before you really get started. We all know that success comes one day at a time. Telling yourself you will fail before you get started is shooting yourself in the foot.

5. People won’t like me.

A set up for rejection. When you enter a new situation telling yourself that people won’t like you, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy!

6. Others are better than I am.

We all tend to compare ourselves to others. Sometimes we exercise prejudice against ourselves, though. Telling yourself that others are better than you is an assault on your self-worth.

7. I am not enough.

A huge one for people who feel inadequate to meet the demands of life. A sense of personal inadequacy is very discouraging – don’t reinforce it!

8. I must be perfect.

The way to guarantee failure is to criticize yourself whenever you are imperfect, which is all the time. We are perfectly imperfect!

9. My opinion doesn’t matter.

More low self-esteem in this statement. To say this one to yourself, you must consider yourself unworthy.

10. I’ll never be any different.

We say this as if we are written failure into stone. It’s a hopeless thought. Just say no to this one!

What To Do About Negative Self-Talk

Follow these steps to get a better handle on your negative self-talk:

1. Catch yourself. So often we run on autopilot and allow our minds to ruin our day. So, start each day with the conscious goal to catch yourself saying negative things.

2. Call a spade a spade. Next, label what you just said! Recognize it as negative self talk.

3. Use the following formula: “I just had the thought…” (repeat the negative thought here).

If you caught youself saying, “I am not worth it,” for example, then you would pause and say, “I just had the thought, ‘I am not worth it.’”

Using this formula securely labels the thought as a mere thought. If you do not realize that what you said was just a thought, you run a higher risk of taking it personally and allowing it to ruin your day.

4. Take a deep breath and move on!

I hope you found this post helpful! If negative self talk persists in spite of employing these methods, then you may have an underlying attachment that maintains the self-sabotage. Please watch this free video to learn more about negative attachments.

If you liked this article, then please like my Facebook Page to keep up with all my writing.