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8 Ways to Stop Reacting & Start Responding

Are you managing your emotions? Or are your emotions managing you? One way to answer this is by listening to the feedback from the people you love and respect in your life. Are they on edge when you're faced with a stressful situation? Are they bracing themselves for your next reaction? Another way to consider this is to imagine you are stopped at a traffic light. You see the car behind you approaching a bit too quickly to stop in time. You watch helplessly as their front end meets the back end of your car. What happens after that? How do you react? Is it positive? Would you rather not say? Most of us don't have to imagine this scenario; we have lived through it - hopefully without injury and with minimal damage to our car. But fender …

How to succeed in college

Do as I say, not as I did I grew up in an academic family. There was no question if I was going to college; the only question was where. I was 17 when I graduated high school. I was nowhere near ready for college - the disciplined, motivated, structured part that included studying, attending classes, knowing what my goals were and how to achieve them. I was ready for the fun parts and that's what I focused on. I spent a little over a year at my first college - a small liberal arts school in idyllic Central Pennsylvania. When I left I had an embarrassingly low GPA and little to show for my time there. Months before I officially failed out, in an attempt to get help, I went to see my advisor. He was a sociology professor; a …

7 Ways to Decide When ‘Enough is Enough’

In late 2007 I was deeply entrenched in creating a business that I believed in with all my being. We had worked with an architect, had building plans, created beautiful marketing materials and even had multiple sales prior to one piece of ground being broken. Then two things happened: first, we ran into a costly construction issue and second, the economy took a nose-dive. One of those two things happening may not have been enough to throw the plans into the gutter, but both were devastating. The realization that our plans were in the gutter did not come immediately. Our business was very slowly withering away and I just refused to accept it. I felt it for months, but I denied it. Then came a day when I overheard my business partner on the …

Is Coaching Better Than Therapy?

There are a lot of comparisons made between therapy and coaching. If you Google therapy vs coaching you will find many pro/con arguments in support of one or the other, as if there is a competition. It is my opinion that therapy and coaching can, and often should, co-exist. However, it should be noted that while a therapist may also coach clients, a coach, without the proper training and licensing, should not, and cannot, practice therapy. When I worked as a therapist I often found myself coaching my clients towards their goals. I didn’t recognize the difference between coaching and therapy at that time but, in retrospect, I think I spent as much time outlining the steps to improving their lives as I did on the issues that brought …