If, like most of us, you feel that peace and well-being are far off, I have a question for you: How much silence and stillness do you allow into your life? At first glance, peace and well-being may seem to have little connection with silence and stillness. But they are so much a part of one another that they can’t really be separated. It might be more accurate to say that peace and well-being and silence and stillness are simply different names for the same thing. We live in a world where we’re continually overstimulated by our devices, our schedules, and the frantic pace we’ve decided is necessary for success.

Miracles come in all sizes. I witnessed one several nights ago during a session of Singing for People Who Believe They Can’t. One of the participants, a lovely woman in her mid-eighties, told me she was sure she couldn’t sing. “Our family just don’t sing,” she said. I suggested that a “wait and see” approach might be more helpful. For the first few weeks, she seemed to confirm her own belief. But I could also see that she was making singing much harder than it needed to be. When a Belief Gets in the Way I could see exactly what she was doing. Having no experience with singing, she assumed

What if the life you’d choose turned out to be the life you’re already living? The question may sound strange, but recently it occurred to me that this is true for me. It wasn’t a conclusion I arrived at through effort or determination. It simply became obvious one day, and it brought with it an extraordinary sense of peace. That doesn’t mean every dream I’ve ever had has come true. It means that my life, exactly as it is—with all its imperfections—is so rich that it no longer occurs to me to wish it were different. It is more than enough. Looking back, I realize that nearly all of the

During a talk with a client, it occurred to me that, like many of us, she was a prisoner to the way she’d learned to think about herself. In other words, she’d spent a lifetime believing a self-image, that like all self-images had almost nothing to do with who she really is. It was obvious to me that believing this self-image, which had been crafted over a long lifetime, was preventing her from seeing who she really is now. And even more than that, it was preventing her from seeing the person she is becoming. After hearing her refer several times to this imaginary person she has always believed herself

I’ve always loved Thanksgiving, and it’s always seemed to me a much less complicated-feeling holiday than Christmas is. I especially like the point of Thanksgiving; slowing down to be thankful, and reflecting on just how many things, especially small things you have to be grateful for.

I dislike the term, “self-help.” The best help we can give ourselves is to recognize who we really are, underneath all the ideas we have about ourselves. Self-help material tends to reinforce the ideas we have about our identities, because they take the identities we create for ourselves and treat them as though they’re our real identities, as though they’re who we really are.

“Uh oh! I made a mistake.” When you have this realization, what tends to be your next thought? The difficulty we have with mistakes is largely a function of what we tell ourselves those mistakes mean. If for example, your thinking tells you your well-being has gone missing because you made a mistake, the experience of making a mistake can lead you to believe something is really wrong. But is it?

The assumptions we make on a routine basis are usually hidden from our conscious view, which is what makes them dangerous to us. We assume something to be true without knowing we’re doing it. If at some point we happen to become aware of the assumption underlying a particular belief, it’s easy to feel like a chump. In other words, it becomes clear to us we’ve been hoodwinked by our own thinking.

Whoever you are, my educated guess is at times you’ve been kidnapped by your own thinking. You may not have thought about it in those terms, but for a moment, just reflect on the phrase, “kidnapped by your own thinking.” When your thinking gets all revved up, and starts running away with you, and from you, what else would you call it?