Perfection is the enemy of good. ~ Voltaire

Unlike what Fox News, ISIS, PETA or Kanye might have you believe, there are very few absolutes in life, and extremism in thought, word or deed is never the route to go. Like the Buddha says of a string on the sitar, if it’s too tight it will break, too loose and you won’t get any sound from it.  Either way the music dies. Life does not exist in black or white, but in fact found in the many shades between.

Everyone has their ways to escape or numb, whether from current circumstances and the daily grind, or from unresolved pain from the past. And when there is no awareness around the suffering and its source, the turmoil is turned inward as unhealthy behaviors, addiction or abuse, or directed outward as jealousy, hatred or violence in its many forms towards ‘others’.

In this era of plasticsurgery-photoshopping-selfie-celebrityworshopping-heylookatmyfabulouslife culture, it’s easy to think the grass is always greener, or that everyone but you has their act together or have an easy-breezy life.  As someone who works intimately with hundreds of folks for a living, I can tell you that NO ONE has it all together. EVERYONE has issues.  It’s just which issues, in which department (relationships, money, sex, career, family, physical, mental and.or emotional health), and to what extent. And if you didn’t have the issue you have, you would have another one. But you’d have one. Or two, or three, generally all connected.  It’s just the way it works.

The question is: How well do you acknowledge, accept, and then begin the process of addressing them?

The idea that there is some level of “perfection” that we can attain in our lives, in our mates, our work, our bodies, our lifestyle, is fiction. It doesn’t exist. No one is perfect. The mere fact that we are human beings means that we exist in order to heal and grow. It means that we are inherently flawed and are expressly alive to learn certain lessons and make whole the various parts of our mind, bodies and souls that are dis-eased.

When you come to terms with the fact that you are a beautifully imperfect being and become aware of the imperfections, love yourself in spite of them; then with compassion and discipline, set out to improve or change what you can. Then, and only then, are we able to start accepting one another: in our own family, our neighbors, our enemies, or anyone who is simply different from us in color or creed. Remember that fellow humans might be having a harder time recognizing and dealing with their own problems and pain right now – we all wake-up to our human-ness at our own pace, sometimes not of our own choosing – this is why we need a steady flow and heaping amounts of patience, empathy and kindness in our world.

Just like the journey is more important than the destination, the striving is more important than the actual perfection. It means we are constantly evolving into the best most kick-ass peaceful versions of ourselves. Accentuating the positive and mitigating or transmuting the not-so-positive. The daily choices we make, the love that we give and receive,  the joy and the sadness and anger and passion we allow ourselves to feel knowing that it is not going to be the same emotion every day all day. There are sunny days and there are cloudy days and we appreciate both equally.  As we experience our challenges we know that victory is right around the corner, and in those the moments of happiness we know at some point we will again feel sadness or disappointment. It’s just the way it works.

How can we move towards a balanced, healthy life without knowing where we need to focus in order to heal, grow?  As we approach Valentine’s Day, use this time like a med student would study the body, inside and out; truly see all of who you are and embrace it. Accept it. Love it. Then take a look at those around you and do the same.  Then you can make an honest assessment about what needs a little therapy, a little remedy, or perhaps even surgery.

Think you might need someone in Private Practice to make sense of it all?  Give me a buzz and I’ll help you avoid a soul-sucking Scandal and prove you most certainly cannot Get Away with Murder, preventing you from killing the dream of that prosperous, fulfilled life you absolutely can and deserve to have!

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Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival. ~ C.S. Lewis

Despite what Simon & Garfunkel once sang, we are not rocks, nor islands, as many of us (especially those drawn to live in the metropolis that is New York) might want to be. The irony of course is that the very nature of being human means we are part of a greater whole and must interact with other human beings on many levels. Yet a sense of connection and belonging doesn’t always come from the family, tribe or culture we are born into, so we must create that connection authentically, first within ourselves and then with others.

Relationships are one of the most difficult areas for us homo sapiens to navigate, and they are the biggest source of our pleasure as well as our pain.  The past three years or so, we have had an advanced course in them; I for one can say as difficult as it’s been, have learned some new and deeper versions of lessons I know will serve me well in the future, all of which culminated in a super-summer intensive, with this harvest season reaping the wisdom culled from that journey.

Some of those nuggets include: finding the balance between losing ourselves/being co-dependent versus isolating and becoming a monk (or a psychopath); having boundaries and not taking on/feeling responsible for another’s emotional or other type of well-being; nurturing yourself, no one can know exactly what you need but you; seeing a person and a relationship as they really are, not how you’d like them to be. And regarding those close/intimate relationships that are more difficult or challenging, keep in mind that person – whether parent, boss, spouse, sibling, lover, friend, child – is just the actor playing the role in a scenario you have created in order to heal and grow.  

Lastly, the people you choose to allow into your life – friends/boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse/partner should meet certain criteria. The word ‘friend’ especially has become so diluted and watered down with the use of Facebook and social media you need to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff and discern the Apples and Oranges.

The foundation of a relationship with anyone deserving of your time and energy must include understanding, appreciation and respect – you should be able to check off at least two of these to be considered a friend, and if you are fortunate to have someone in your life who truly understands, appreciates and respects you, then you are very, very lucky and should treasure and honor that relationship for the special gem that it is.

The bottom line is, You Gotta Have Friends, and making time for friendships and your most important relationships is not a luxury but a necessity. It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to day busyness of life, but we need to discipline ourselves to create space for connecting with the people who love and accept us, who know and understand us, with whom we share interests and history, and with whom we have grown together, not apart.

Not sure who are your buds and who are the duds in your life? Give me a buzz and we’ll see which relationships are ripe for the pickin’ and which ones have taken a lickin’!

(*Today’s PGG was originally posted on October 2, 2012)

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The American way of life is all about productivity and the value we place upon it.  This generally means how many hours we spent at the office, how many things we crossed off our to-do lists, projects you completed, goals accomplished.

Another way of being ‘productive’ is by doing nothing When used in correct proportion and at the right time, nothing can be the most productive thing we can do – that’s the reason why we should give ourselves a snow day at least once a month, regardless of the weather report!

Rest, relaxation and leisurely activities are productive because they recharge our batteries, an essential requirement that fuels ourselves to carry on. More important, there is an ebb and a flow to our lives, and when we’re in a time of rest and disengagement, that’s often when the big idea, the solution to the problem, the words that we’ve been trying to force just appear….almost effortlessly.

You must let the ebb ebb and the flow flow. If you’re too busy doing, doing, doing, thinking, thinking, thinking, then there is no room for creativity to bubble up from within or inspire from without, to discover what you really want or feel, or for you to heal.

When you do a session with me, I am able to identify your rhythm of ebb and flow, and how the whole work/life balance dance fills your world. Sometimes you might not even realize how ‘off’ you are…and that’s exactly what’s been holding you back in your career, relationships or health.…..so give me a buzz, I’m here to help and look forward to working with you soon!

P.S. Looking for a little extra reading material on your extra day off?  Here are a few more PGG’s that seem like good ones for today. Enjoy!:

One Day at a Time

The Rhythm of the Saints

Freeze Frame

A Body at Rest

World Wide Web

(*Today’s PGG was originally posted on February 16, 2010)

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Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness . ~ Khalil Gibran

If you look for truth, you may get comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and, in the end, despair. ~ C.S. Lewis

New Year’s always stirs up thoughts about what we want to change in our lives, but that means you need to have a good idea of what needs to change in the first place – and like the famous prayer says, have the serenity to accept the things you cannot change, the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Getting to that accurate perception is the first step, and might actually be more important than making the change; therefore perhaps our work this year is to ‘snap out of it’ and instead see ourselves, situations and people as they really are, not how we’d like them to be.  Then and only then can real change begin.

Humans, especially 21st century versions, want what we want when we want it; our media and technology only makes this worse, fueling our impulses and imagination with its magnified distortion of time, place and interaction; they enable us to more easily delude ourselves in thinking our situation is one way when it is in fact another; when we think a job, our health, or a relationship is positive when it’s not, or vice versa. They distract us and makes us forget that anything lasting is a process and requires massive amounts of reflection, patience and perseverance.

As the biblical saying goes, ‘Know the truth and the truth shall set you free’.  It’s not always fun getting there. Letting go of lifelong dreams and illusions as well as accepting ourselves, people and circumstances as they are- relinquishing any hope that they are or will become what or who you wish them to be- can be extremely painful and, in fact, feel like a death that you need to grieve.

The good news is that knowing and accepting the truth affords us a more profound, productive and meaningful life experience when we know what is real. When we live from that place we can then make better decisions about addressing any situation, how to improve it or let it go – the more accurate the assessment, the more effective the solution can be.

Because of my talent for connecting the dots, cutting through the ‘crap’ and getting to the root of things quickly and directly, my clients might not like what I have to tell them at first – yet they always come back to me days, weeks or years later and admit it was not necessarily what they wanted to hear, but ultimately exactly what they needed at the time. (And saved them thousands of dollars in therapy!)

The truth can be overwhelming but once you acknowledge it, you can really start to move forward. So before you seriously embark any resolutions, begin there. It’s strong medicine to start off the year, but essential if you want to get healthy in any area of your life.

Feeling like A Change is Gonna Come, but not sure how to make it happen? Give me a buzz and I’ll be the doctor with the diagnosis and that spoon full of sugar to make the medicine go down! ❤

(*Today’s PGG was originally posted on January 7, 2014)

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One of the things I learned when I was negotiating was that until I changed myself, I could not change others .~ Nelson Mandela 

Revolution is the evolution of humans into a higher humanity . ~ Grace Lee Boggs                  

Those of you who know me or have been reading PGG for a while know that my passion and mission in life has always been to contribute to world peace, mostly through my work best expressed in my mantra that personal transformation is the key to social transformation.

So it should come as no surprise that I profoundly relate to and revere the lives of these two nonagenarians, the late 95 year old Nelson Mandela and the 98 year old activist and author Grace Lee Boggs, who literally embody this philosophy in every cell of their beings; who have demonstrated it externally with their activism and sacrifice for racial equality and social justice, and internally by the wisdom they have gained and generously share from nearly a century of experience, observation, and most importantly, reflection.   

Both started out as ‘radicals’, and even Mandela up until 2008, were branded as terrorists with the requisite FBI/CIA files because they initially saw the only way to overthrow the entrenched power structure was by employing the more literal and sometimes violent tactics of revolution through organized movements and a spirit of rebellion. But through trial and error, incarceration and maturity, they eventually evolved; they gave themselves permission to change their minds, learn and grow in light of new information, experimentation and once again, reflection – ultimately coming to the conclusion that in order to change the world they would have to change themselves.

They came to understand that indeed humanity is made up of humans and that humans were going to have to deal with other humans in order to get anything done. So we’d better be the best we can be as individuals and try to get along and get past our differences and disagreements, because the reality is that we must co-exist harmoniously – whether in a racially divided African country, a rundown bankrupt American city or in your very own household.

We are living in extraordinary times and it is no accident that you are who you are at this moment in history.

What does your humanity mean to you?  As our world continues to go through turbulent changes and upheavals, it will be up to us individually and collectively to do our part to ‘tear down’ where necessary and rebuild a more enlightened society that reflects our evolved humanity.  But we have to start with ourselves, and do what we can in our immediate environments to demonstrate our own revolution – which, by the way, does not happen overnight or with a magic pill, silver bullet or special app.

It is only through keen observation, deep reflection and inner and outer sweating effort and energy over a long period of time directed towards improving ourselves and serving others that true transformation can take place. Then, if we’re lucky, by the time we reach our 90’s we can look back and see how our journey has positively and productively unfolded in both a personal and political way, and be proud of what we accomplished and the legacy we will leave behind.

Wondering how it will all go down if you take up the cause? Give me a buzz and I will incite a riot in your heart to make the most of what you got, so at the end of the day you know it’s gonna be alright!

(*Today’s PGG was originally posted on December 11, 2013)

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It has always bothered me that most New Year Resolutions seem to revolve around losing weight and getting in shape. Gyms especially bank on this, with classes and machines overflowing those first two weeks in January only to dwindle back down to those who have been going all along. The attrition is a perfect example of not heeding our internal ebb and flow, in addition to Spring being a much more natural time to do make such changes. So don’t feel bad if this describes you!

Instead, why not think about detoxing and tuning-up your mental and emotional diets, adjusting your atmosphere and exercising a more positive attitude towards yourself and others?

In 1981, the advent of something called Music Television (yes, kids, that was MTV in the olden days) meant that Video Killed the Radio Star.  Although the sentiment initially applied to the music industry, it has evolved to our 24/7 multi-device-always-on, entertainment/info news cycle, and delivery of much nonsense and nuttiness through a gazillion distribution channels both online and off.  The combination of media and technology is a powerful force that can either enhance or erode our humanity, but with direction we’re going in, it seems like video has killed our sanity.

In a way, we’ve always been our own little radio towers with what we think and feel, but now we are literally transmitting these thoughts and feelings in more tangible way with our gadgets and gizmos. What are you receiving and what are you broadcasting?  How is it impacting your state of mind and mood?

What do you tune-in to on a daily basis? Which intoxicating sights, sounds and stories infiltrate your being: cat videos, pundits, housewives, serial murders, frenemies? I admit I enjoy a little Micky D’s now and then, but like Morgan Spurlock, remember what happens to you when you ingest that all day, every day. If we are what we eat (and we are) then we are what we read, watch and listen to as well. In the schmorgasborg of programming out there, the pickins’ are slim when it comes to nutrition.  Whether TV or social media, strive for the majority of your consumption to be thoughtful, uplifting, educational, informative, and know that good comedy is actually medicine.

(P.S. I hear there are some quality series that exist – but it’s curious we’ve coined the term to “binge-watch” say, Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad. What does that do to your sensory digestive system, what kind of hangover would you have from that?  How could you have used your time and energy in a more productive way?  When you are cranky the next day is it due to your emotions or Walter White’s?)

I am not anti-TV/media/technology. I say all things in moderation. The trick is to become conscious and not be spoon fed whatever the suits and advertisers want us to eat!  Try a TV fast and realize you’re not missing all that much.  You’ll have time to sleep more, learn to cook or finally begin to meditate. It’s up to us to control our technology, and not allow our technology to control us. 

So if you’re dragging in the morning, think about what you watched on your screen the night before. If you can’t get any work done or fall asleep, how many hours did you allow yourself to be led astray via random Facebook or Twitter feeds? And what it is that you are creating or contributing with your wifi and widgets?  

In an increasingly desensitized and distracted world with so many folks feeling stuck, confused and frustrated in their career and life, who are searching for purpose and meaning, and want to enjoy better health and relationships in their lives, we must constantly pull out the weeds of static in and around our thoughts and emotions in order to operate at a higher frequency and create the best environment for ourselves and others.

Much of what is on television and the internet these days is white noise, so protect yourself with some radio silence.  Not quite sure how to detach from the media madness? Give me a buzz – I’ll help you march to the beat of your own drum in harmony with the independent soundtrack of your soul and keep away the Karma Police, who are there to remind you that you always have a choice.

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If you like what I write, you’ll love what I have to say in person!  Click on above links for info about my coaching and speaking services and contact me today.

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Last night* we experienced a rare occurrence of the Winter Solstice and a total lunar eclipse overlapping; this means the shortest day of the year combined with the cover-up of a full moon gave us a double dose of darkness. Although there is some debate and lots of myths about what effects these sorts of things have on people, after the year – and especially past couple of months- we’ve had, my interpretation is that “it’s always darkest before dawn.”

The good news is from now on the days will be getting progressively longer and bright. It’s important at this time of year to get all the literal sunlight in you can – think of the rays as vitamins for your mind, body, spirit and soul, a lack of which can alter our moods as anyone with SAD will attest.  In addition to the actual light, it’s also a good idea to keep things as ‘light’ as possible – do a little dancing (even if just around the house) or Zumba and be sure to laugh a lot.  At the very least you will make others smile when they see you sunbathing in 29 degree weather!

As we approach the end of the year, it’s also a good time to shed some light on what you’ve accomplished this past year. Many of my clients are in career transition, so it’s easy for them to feel as if nothing has happened; or if you are just going about your business from day to day, it’s easy to lose track of what has actually transpired over the past 12 months.

So make sure you spend at least a couple of hours over the next week or two with your journal and calendar to jog your memory to see what external things you experienced and accomplished this year, big or small. Then let them help you recall how you have grown and what has changed for you internally for you as well. What mental and/or emotional shifts have occurred, in terms of your perceptions of yourself, your life, your work, and your relationships? How have they affected some of the external actions you took or that happened to you? How can you bring more light to your world and the world around you?

Having a little trouble seeing the proof in the pudding of how far you’ve come along? I can be a flood light, offer an objective point of view and a little push for you to see where you’ve been and where you want to go in 2015 and beyond. Just give me a buzz and I’ll light the way to a more peaceful and prosperous new you!  

HAPPY HOLIDAYS! CLICK HERE FOR SPECIAL YEAR-END OFFER  

(*Today’s PGG was originally posted on December 21, 2010)

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No matter what the topic, I always talk about two things in my seminars: how can we expect to have peace on this planet if we don’t have peace in our own lives; and everyone should cook.  Ergo, we must have peace in our kitchens in order to have peace in our lives in order to have peace in the world.  

Whether you consider yourself the next Top Chef or think heating up leftovers in the microwave qualifies, my go-to recipe that gourmets and gauche gourmands alike can make is pea soup. Cooking in general, and especially something like soup, is extremely meditative and teaches us that life does not always function like an instant message; this forces you to slow down, be more present, have more patience and then literally enjoy the fruits of your labor.

One ingredient alone won’t cut it, and you can really make the recipe your own.  Each chopped up piece of onion, carrot, celery, garlic, (ham, kale, turnip, parsnip, sweet potato…whatever else you want to put in there) and of course split peas, ultimately blend together in an harmonious way; the whole meal is highly nutritious with many healthy benefits, and the subtle combination of these diverse components, over time, brings out the best in each other.  Yum.

The United States has been called a melting pot, and as a struggling global superpower, if that can truly be realized in its most positive sense, the rest of the world has a pretty good shot as well.  So, as you’re making the soup, perhaps visualize the ingredients as Red States and Blue States, the Rich and the Poor, White, Black, Muslim, Non-Muslim, Gay, Straight, Liberals and Conservatives – and why not throw in the countries of the European Union as well, since they need all the help they can get at the moment…

But if you really are a menace in the galley, you can always take a mental ride on the Peace Train or imagine yourself a member of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, with 100 artists from over 30 countries playing more than two dozen diverse instruments, coming together to create that beautiful universal language known as music.

Still feel like your Jong is kind of Il?  Give me a buzz and I’ll help unite your body, relationships, career and life so they can be peas in a pod and you can make your contribution by experiencing a deeper sense of peace in your piece of the pie.  

(Today’s PGG was originally posted on December 20, 2011)

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