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We are all very familiar with the Golden Rule: treat people the way you want to be treated.  But what if you are someone who feels let you down by the way people are treating you?

Here’s a twist on the Golden Rule that people rarely consider:  When the people you love are not treating you the way you want to be treated, perhaps it is because you expect them to give you what you have not learned to give yourself.

When you have not learned to give yourself the love, kindness and compassion that you need, you can become easily triggered by another’s behavior.

For instance, if your Inner Critic frequently speaks to you in disparaging ways, you may become overly reactive to the smallest bit of disrespect from your teenager despite knowing that this behavior is typical of a child this age.  If your Inner Critic makes you feel like you are not valued or important enough, your spouse’s forgetfulness to check in with you...

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Yesterday, we talked with a new client, a senior level executive with years of experience as a leader, a history of promotions and ample accolades.  

In each discussion we have with her, we become more present to her greatness. But we also feel heartbroken to hear how loud her Inner Critic is judging, assessing and chattering negative messages.

“You’re obsolete.”

“You’ll never find that dream job.”

“The great years of your professional life are over.”

Unfortunately, this is a familiar conversation to us. Many of our clients find themselves in a place where they’re unable to take action.

They analyze and overanalyze what they should or actually say.

For many of us, our Inner Critic’s messages sabotage us and keep us stuck, saying some variation of:

“I don’t feel like I’m ready. I don’t have what it takes.”

“I’m not going to do it perfectly, so I...

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Many of us never really think about what having a relationship with yourself really means. However, it is the key to everything we truly want in life; the key to peace, joy, contentment, love, and connection. Often we are not aware that it is our automatic thoughts about ourselves and of life that robs us of the very things that we are striving to attain. We often think that the way we can attain love, peace, joy, contentment, happiness, is by perfecting the “content” of our lives. If we get the “right” job, the “right” amount of money, weigh the “right” amount, be in the “right” relationship, we will find what we are looking for. The longer we pursue these goals as a means of attaining happiness, the more we recognize that the feeling of happiness or peace when the goal is met never lasts long.

THE HAMSTER ON THE HAMSTER-WHEEL

The minute we achieve a goal, we are onto the next, thinking...

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Through our work with hundreds of clients, we have discovered a theme.  This theme is that most of us derive our sense of self comes from the messages of our Inner Critic. We believe the messages of our Inner Critic, even when life gives us no evidence.  Even when life gives us a totally opposite message, in fact!

If our Inner Critic tells us that we are not good enough no matter how many people love us, no matter how much success we have had in our live, no matter how many compliments we have received, we only listen to what our Inner Critic says.

We think we hear those positive things about ourselves because we have “fooled” the ones we love. If they REALLY knew us the way we “know” ourselves, they would see what we know to be true. But, thus far, we have fooled them. What great con artists we all are! What if others actually see us for who we REALLY are?

What if who we think we are, our self concept, is really...

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Learning to separate yourself from your Inner Critic and let go of the automatic attempt to fix or control and instead very consciously choosing love and connection to your true self – without the interference of your Inner Critic – is a key step to an extraordinary relationship.

The greatest gift you can give to your relationships is to learn to be free from the damaging messages of your Inner Critic. Your Inner critic is constantly evaluating and judging you, your life, your partner, and your relationships. When your Inner Critic is in charge, it tries to control other people and the dynamics in the relationship so that things fit your Inner Critic’s ideal picture. Of course, in trying to do that, at any given moment, your partner can do or say something that causes distress inside you as soon as that ideal picture is not met. Our Inner Critic creates fear and insecurity because:

• Your partner is not behaving the...

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We all get frustrated sometimes. Our expectations aren’t met. Our intentions get thwarted. What we want to happen isn’t happening fast enough. We keep doing what we think will produce the best result we want, but it still seems to go nowhere. What to do about it?

We can stomp our feet in frustration, we can pull our hair out, we can throw an adult temper tantrum.  All that will get us is painful feet, thinning hair, and a reputation for being immature.

Frustration that dominates our lives becomes a problem. Life is filled with circumstances and events that can be frustrating. But if we get triggered into an over-reaction when things don’t go our way, it is usually the inner critic that has taken over.

She is the one who makes your blood pressure rise and the one who feels angry and resentful towards whatever or whomever is blocking you.

As always, the first step in easing the frustrations we feel is...

There is an old Cherokee Indian legend that illustrates the battle between US and our INNER CRITIC beautifully.

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life.

“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.

“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil–he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”

He continued, “The other is good–he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.

The same fight is going on inside you–and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

In our culture, high self-esteem is something that has received a lot of attention.

• We want to feel talented,...

I will admit it. I hate how judgmental I can be. But, the truth is that human beings are judgment making machines.

Even those human beings who proclaim they are not at all judgmental, they too have judgments. How many times have you formed an opinion of someone before you really got to know them? How many times have you felt judged by someone who doesn’t really know or understand you?

Most of our judgments of others come from fear. You see, the judgments that we have are all connected to what we have determined is the right way to be, the right way to live life, and the right things in life to value. Therefore, all of our judgments are somehow attempts to reinforce that we are “right” about the way we live.

We need to be “right”, because if we are wrong, it makes us feel like we are flawed in some way. And because it is difficult and scary to look at your flaws, and easier to find flaws in others, we automatically try to feel good by finding flaws in...

As a therapist, I work with a lot of people who struggle with compulsive eating and body image issues.   Many of my clients have been on many different diets, and have lost the same 10, 30, 50 lbs. over and over again.

We are a culture that is obsessed with appearance, and many people set out to lose weight so that they can look better.  The diet industry is a $60 billion per year industry because it targets emphasis on food and weight as the problem.  As a result, millions of people are literally at war with themselves, struggling to deal with their food compulsions, beating themselves up on a daily basis for “having no willpower.”  It is this ongoing war, strengthened by images in the media and cultural messages, that produces a culture of self-loathing people.  

For most, the belief behind the war is “once I am thinner, I will feel the way that I want to feel about myself and my life.”  What most people fail to recognize...

4 steps to calm your mind and stop the chaos

Do you ever wish that you could just take a vacation from your mind?

Do you wish that you had an “on-off” switch on the side of your head that you could turn off your worry about the future, your regrets of the past, the things you keep telling yourself over and over that you need to work on or change?

Our mind, the Queen of Chaos, can literally drive us crazy.  We live in a culture that fosters an overactive mind, that creates worry, frustration, dissatisfaction, sleeplessness, and a feeling that no matter what life we have, something (or many things!) about our life needs to be different.  It is as though our minds create a war inside of us, and we think that the way to peace is through continuing to examine what we need to change, how we need to improve, or we fixate on changing or improving someone else, like our spouse or our kids!

The bottom line is this:  We will never feel the content, joy, love and...