Tag: Challenges

Remembering to Dig Deep

The best lessons I've learned in life have happened while running and if there is one thing I can share with the others, it is "Dig Deep." It's a phrase I say to myself whether on a daily run where I feel less than strong or in a road race when I feel as if my legs are like noodles and I am going to bring up cookies. Not the prettiest of all imageries, but "Dig Deep" has carried over into other areas of my life when I felt like the world was handing me way too much. You don't…

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5 Concepts for Overcoming Challenges

When adversity strikes and overtakes many or all areas of our lives, it can be difficult to see the multiple hidden blessings that are obtained by moving through our challenges, one day at a time. Adversity provides us with the chance to remove things from our lives that are non-essential and have been weighing us down. Just as important, adversity makes the overcomer a better person, as the spoils of war are available to those who refuse to quit and succumb to their current tragic circumstances. We learn how to become resilient, how to step out in faith, and how…

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Making the Most of the Hand You’re Dealt

Life has a way of dealing each of us a deck of cards that ranges in numbers and colors. Each and every day we wake up and pull a card and the day has been defined. There are good days and great days and sad days and unhappy days; however there is one thing that is is guaranteed – you have the freedom to accept what you are dealt or you can fold. Over the course of a little more than four years, I had no idea what cards I would be dealt or that I would desperately need to find…

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Triumph Over the Toughest Challenges

I was 27 years old, at the start of my medical career and expecting my first child, when the neurologist confirmed what the first clinician had suspected - the tremor I had been experiencing over the preceding year was Young Onset Parkinson's Disease, a progressive neurodegenerative disease for which there is no cure. The diagnosis was made and my dance with denial, fear, anger and secrecy began, one that lasted almost a decade. Thoughts of disability and helplessness eventually turned to hope and optimism but the transformation was a painful and difficult process. My story however is not unique. Each…

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As Is, I’m Here

During a weekend recently three big challenges came up for me and and I used one of my favorite mantras over and over again, “As Is, I’m Here.”  Saying “As Is” reminds you of the willingness to allow yourself to be exactly as you are in this moment. It invites you to let go of struggling with whatever is (your usual mode), so you can move into the place of healing that comes from allowing yourself to be exactly as you are. “I’m Here” reminds you to be keenly attentive to what is, in a way that invites your heart to be open to…

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How You can Find Healing that Lasts

How would your life change if you trusted that your challenges are a part of your journey home – back to yourself and back to Life – instead of feeling that your challenges are here because you have done something wrong or you are being punished or God fell asleep on the job? What would happen if your illness, your difficult relationship, your demanding boss, your compulsions, and maybe even your troublesome dog were showing up in your life to help you heal? The healing you long for comes when you discover how to play the warmer, warmer/colder, colder game. Remember that…

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Moving Forward Through Ups and Downs

Do you have a goal which seems far away? Are you working toward something but keep hitting obstacles? Are you uncertain you are on the right path? Have you lost your path and are not sure what is next? Lately many of my clients have been going through a confusing, frustrating, up and down time. Nothing seems stable any more. What used to be is gone, but what is next has not yet shown up. As our brain loves the familiar, it senses change as a danger knocking us into the blur and cloudiness of stress. Now not only are…

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Ask a Luminary

How Can I Respond to Financial Obstacles Positively?

"My husband and I keep getting hit hard financially. One bad break after the next, I feel like I'm drowning. It has to get taken care of, so it will, but how do I go about life without feeling totally defeated?" ~ Laura, Louisville, KT Dear Laura, It is such a challenge not to say “No!” when life circumstances show up in a way that you don’t prefer. The game is to leave your history alone and move forward. When you judge yourself or others for why things are the way they are, then things get heavy and it makes…

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