“The impulse to heal is real and powerful and lies within the client. Our job as therapist is to evoke this healing power, meet its tests and support it in its expression and development. We are not the healers. We are the context in which the healing is inspired.” Ron Kurtz (Hakomi author and trainer) Hakomi is an approach that uses the body’s experiences as a source of information.

“To all the people watching, I can never thank you enough for your kindness to me and I’ll think about it for the rest of my life.  All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical.  I hate cynicism — it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere.  Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get.  But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”  Conan O’Brien

If you dismiss things immediately if they sound like a cliche, you might be missing some good stuff. Cliches are simply “unoriginal ideas” — and that’s fine. There are some good ideas that have been floating around for a while. Try this one on: “Be grateful for what you have.” Yawn, eye-roll, dismiss. Try it. Write down 5 to 7 things you’re glad about every night before you go to sleep for one week. Read all the entries each night. See what happens. (Hint: If you can’t think of things you’re grateful for, try thinking about the things you don’t want that you don’t have.) It’s best to do right before you turn out the light to go to sleep. Consider what you usually think about as you fall asleep? An assortment of worries or concerns, slights from difficult co-workers, things you need to remember… Negativity and chaos, really. If you purposefully inject the positive into your brain (think the movie The Matrix without the big machine and the pain) then the negative worries and concerns get bumped out. The positive isn’t fluff. It’s real things in your life that you’re actually grateful for, you just tend not to notice. We tend to have a pretty tight focus on what’s wrong with our lives, and ourselves for that matter. With that tight a focus, you’re really missing the big picture. Sometimes our minds need a manual focus adjustment to see the real picture. Try it out and let me know what you notice.

Laurence Gonzales has written two books, Deep Survival and Everyday Survival. This article, based on the book of the same title, is a wonderful example of how changing your thinking can change your experiences dramatically. While you may not be in danger of starving to death or you may not be lost in the wilderness, his research into survival applies as directly to starving for happiness or being lost in your challenges without a way out.

Everyday Survival
by Laurence Gonzales

Most survival guides fail to consider some very useful tools: an individual’s character, wits, and worldview. The tips assembled here will change the way you approach each and every day—and help you survive a particularly bad one.
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Our Deepest Fear
by Marianne Williamson
from A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? … Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory … that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.