One day last winter I was talking with a vivacious young mother of three — two little boys and a little girl.  I’ve long since forgotten her larger topic, because I was so taken with something she said almost parenthetically.

Her little girl, age eight, she explained, wanted to be able to sail a boat someday.  Her dream seemed hopelessly out of reach to her.  In response to her mom’s empathic comments, the child said sadly, “But I can’t sail a boat…”

Without so much as a thought, because it was so natural to her, her mom responded, “That takes awhile.  We’ll get you there.”

What struck me was the absolute presumption that her child’s reaching her goal was not merely a function of individual will and struggle.  No, not at all!  It was assumed that this fortunate little girl would be wrapped in a wave of support that would sweep her toward her cherished destination. It wouldn’t happen overnight, but she wouldn’t be alone on the path.  And – she would make it; her mom had no doubt.

“We’ll get you there.”

Why is it so often our default to believe that whatever we want, we will have to achieve alone, when the reality is that almost all people who have achieved anything of personal significance will say, if they’re willing to be honest, that they couldn’t have done it without the unwavering help and support of at least one — and often three or four — other people?

This wonderful mom’s words conveyed quiet confidence; they comprised a statement of fact and intent. Her reassuring certainty evoked in me the sense of a wave, in the form of the bracing support of family, that will move this little girl where she points herself, if she does her part.

This isn’t just kids’ stuff.  Having helpers, teachers, guides, friends — there is far more to this than the nuts and bolts of the logistical assistance they provide.  At a very deep level, they provide the strengthening, almost physical sensation of having someone in your corner, backing you up, taking your goals as something that they, too, have a role in.

Imagine a wave, larger than yourself, surrounding you, when you take on the dreams that are dearest to you.  Imagine the feeling of one — or several — people who respond to your wish saying, “That takes a while.  We’ll get you there.”

It’s not always easy to find the right people; you may have a few fiascoes.  But when when you connect with that certain energy and when you allow yourself to be vulnerable enough to accept the hand that reaches out to you, you will sail.

So I am not suggesting, with the idea of feeling “perfect on your own”, that you should spend your life in independent isolation.  I’m not out to advocate for the single life.

“No, no, a thousand times no!” as the old song goes.  Feeling perfect on your own is not about divorce.

Human beings are social creatures.  Many people (but not all) want a life partner, and most of us like — and need — to be around other people.  But there is an essential distinction between needing to be connected to another person in order to feel whole versus thriving in the presence of another person who brings out the best in you.

And that’s the distinction I’m trying to get to when I talk about feeling perfect on your own.

Here’s what I mean.

If the relationship you’re in feels more like a splint than a thrill, that’s a sign that you’re feeling like you can’t stand up on your own, that perhaps you feel a need to merge with another person to support you in facing life.  Of course, it’s normal for partners to provide support for each other through the ups and downs of everyday life.  But this is different.  This is a sense that if not for the other person, you couldn’t make it.

By the way, this happens as often to men as it does to women although that’s less likely to be talked about or even noticed!

For a person experiencing this kind of dependence, the result is that she is no longer in the relationship by choice.  She’s there because she doesn’t believe that she can survive outside it.  A downward spiral of emotions between her and her partner is likely to follow — anger, resentment, guilt, fear.  Through it all, she has an inner knowing that there is more to her than this; that she’s capable of so much more.

In other words, she has lost access to a significant part of herself.  Sound familiar?  Then you’ll remember that losing yourself is a fast path to depression and a sense of emptiness about life.  The antidote? Active self-expression.

The way to approach this is by strengthening your knowledge of who you are as a person and to increase your courage to live into that.  Surround yourself with people who affirm you.  That may require you to add some new people into your life. Get in touch with your own opinions and values; speak them and act on them.  This will help you regain your sense of self efficacy; the feeling that you’re capable and competent.  Challenge yourself to learn to do household tasks that you’re insecure about — or learn how to get them done.  Get to know your finances and have a plan to support yourself if you need to.  All of this takes time, but once you’ve done it, you’ll no longer feel compelled to stay in a relationship for survival.  Instead, you’ll be able to make a choice.

If the relationship you’re in is hurtful to you, you’ll be able to leave.  If your life is enhanced by sharing it with your partner, you’ll be able to freely choose to stay.  Your free choice is a plus for your partner.  When you’re involved with another person by choice, because you admire and are attracted to him or her, that’s a true compliment.  Feeling perfect on your own radiates confidence and frees you to love.  To your significant other, you are able to convey, “I feel complete — but my life is even better with you in it.  I love to be with you! I choose you!”

Learn more about the new Perfect on Your Own ecourse, a homestudy course with unlimited online coaching here — and about Perfect on Your Own groups here.

To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily.

To not dare is to lose oneself.

– Soren Kierkegaard

Scores of things capture your interest every day. Some of them keep popping up in your mind — and you might find yourself blinking back the thoughts. How do you tell the difference between a passing fancy and a challenge that you should take on? And what about all the stress that goes with daring to do something new?

I’ll talk today about why it’s so important to keep right on taking on the next challenge and the next — and the next.

Listen here:

Download here.

Invincible Voice is loaded with tips, insight, inspiration and conversation about vibrant, depression-free living. It’s all about moving from being invisible to being invincible. I’ll talk about why women give up their voices and how you can get yours back. In the process, we’ll look at parenting and how it affects children’s capacity for resilience — and the impact of the way you were parented on your vulnerability to depression as an adult. We’ll explore the impact of trauma on voice; lost voices in the workplace, how to raise daughters to joyfully be exactly who they are — and that’s just a sample!

When you need a little inspiration, a gentle nudge that reminds you of your own value, or ideas about how to support your friends, kids and colleagues in sharing their unique voices, just listen in on any one of these calls.

Finding your voice will change your life.

To receive the links to weekly podcasts, subscribe to the Sea Change ezine here. You’ll be added to The Self Development Place email list to be notified of the topics for future Invincible Voice podcasts as well as about other happenings at The Self Development Place.

It’s an inescapable fact that we all grow up with hundreds of messages about the lives we’re expected to lead. You can probably think of examples ranging from what you should wear to what you could earn — and much of this was communicated to you very subtly, with nothing more than a sideways glance or a pejorative tone of voice. The older you are, the more those expectations differed from what was communicated to your male siblings and peers — but make no mistake. Even though that discrepancy has decreased over the years, it’s still there for girls today.

Who you are today, what you expect for yourself and your life, is shaped by what you learned as a child about the life you could expect to lead. In today’s call, I’ll expose some of those limiting messages to you. By becoming aware, you can consciously broaden your beliefs about the possibilities that life holds for you.

Listen here:

Download here.

Invincible Voice is loaded with tips, insight, inspiration and conversation about vibrant, depression-free living. It’s all about moving from being invisible to being invincible. I’ll talk about why women give up their voices and how you can get yours back. In the process, we’ll look at parenting and how it affects children’s capacity for resilience — and the impact of the way you were parented on your vulnerability to depression as an adult. We’ll explore the impact of trauma on voice; lost voices in the workplace, how to raise daughters to joyfully be exactly who they are — and that’s just a sample!

When you need a little inspiration, a gentle nudge that reminds you of your own value, or ideas about how to support your friends, kids and colleagues in sharing their unique voices, just listen in on any one of these calls.

Finding your voice will change your life.

To receive the links to weekly podcasts, subscribe to the Sea Change ezine here. You’ll be added to The Self Development Place email list to be notified of the topics for future Invincible Voice podcasts as well as about other happenings at The Self Development Place.

There’s a lot of lingo out there that is sometimes casually used to cast a false light on problems within relationships. One of the phrases you’ve probably heard misused is “communication problem”. This conveys that you and your significant other are simply not understanding one another and that if you gain some communication skills, all will be well. And sometimes that really is the case.

However, it is not uncommon in relationships where there is underlying anger for one person to purposely send unclear or deliberately misleading messages to the other. That’s not a communication problem; it’s a lack of empathy and even conscience. Today I’ll draw the distinction between communication issues and “gaslighting” for you and provide you some tips for assessing which category the communication glitches in your relationships fall into.

Listen here:

Download here.

Invincible Voice is loaded with tips, insight, inspiration and conversation about vibrant, depression-free living. It’s all about moving from being invisible to being invincible. I’ll talk about why women give up their voices and how you can get yours back. In the process, we’ll look at parenting and how it affects children’s capacity for resilience — and the impact of the way you were parented on your vulnerability to depression as an adult. We’ll explore the impact of trauma on voice; lost voices in the workplace, how to raise daughters to joyfully be exactly who they are — and that’s just a sample!

When you need a little inspiration, a gentle nudge that reminds you of your own value, or ideas about how to support your friends, kids and colleagues in sharing their unique voices, just listen in on any one of these calls.

Finding your voice will change your life.

To receive the links to weekly podcasts, subscribe to the Sea Change ezine here. You’ll be added to The Self Development Place email list to be notified of the topics for future Invincible Voice podcasts as well as about other happenings at The Self Development Place.

Why can one little event — like tripping over the computer cord or finding a mistake in your work — throw you into a severe funk — and the very same thing would be tossed off and forgotten by your spouse or co-worker? There are several things at work here. In this call I’ll be talking about some very specific patterns of thinking that make the difference between resilience and depression; the difference between feeling like giving up — vs. having a small laugh. I’ll be referring to psychologist Martin Seligman’s great book on the topic — Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life.

By the end of the call, you’ll have clear steps to take — and to teach your kids.

Listen here:

Download here.

Invincible Voice is loaded with tips, insight, inspiration and conversation about vibrant, depression-free living. It’s all about moving from being invisible to being invincible. I’ll talk about why women give up their voices and how you can get yours back. In the process, we’ll look at parenting and how it affects children’s capacity for resilience — and the impact of the way you were parented on your vulnerability to depression as an adult. We’ll explore the impact of trauma on voice; lost voices in the workplace, how to raise daughters to joyfully be exactly who they are — and that’s just a sample!

When you need a little inspiration, a gentle nudge that reminds you of your own value, or ideas about how to support your friends, kids and colleagues in sharing their unique voices, just listen in on any one of these calls.

Finding your voice will change your life.

To receive the links to weekly podcasts, subscribe to the Sea Change ezine here. You’ll be added to The Self Development Place email list to be notified of the topics for future Invincible Voice podcasts as well as about other happenings at The Self Development Place.

Whether it’s at work, in relationships or in any other aspect of life, there are two choices – to move forward or to stagnate. Trying to keep things just as they are might sound ideal, but over time you’ll find that your life feels less and less exciting; you might start to feel depressed and not know why.

But moving forward always involves the unknown. I’ll be talking about why it’s so important to step into the unknown despite the risk – and then I’ll help you do it.

Listen here:

Download here: Take a Chance! Why you absolutely must take personal risks and 3 tips to help you start today

Invincible Voice is loaded with tips, insight, inspiration and conversation about vibrant, depression-free living. It’s all about moving from being invisible to being invincible. I’ll talk about why women give up their voices and how you can get yours back. In the process, we’ll look at parenting and how it affects children’s capacity for resilience — and the impact of the way you were parented on your vulnerability to depression as an adult. We’ll explore the impact of trauma on voice; lost voices in the workplace, how to raise daughters to joyfully be exactly who they are — and that’s just a sample!

When you need a little inspiration, a gentle nudge that reminds you of your own value, or ideas about how to support your friends, kids and colleagues in sharing their unique voices, just listen in on any one of these calls.

Finding your voice will change your life.

To receive the links to weekly podcasts, subscribe to the Sea Change ezine here. You’ll be added to The Self Development Place email list to be notified of the topics for future Invincible Voice podcasts as well as about other happenings at The Self Development Place.

It’s fact that how we feel in any given moment affects how well we work.  That’s easy to confirm simply by thinking about the last time you tried to accomplish a task after trying to talk the bank out of a $39 late fee.  Or after a conversation with your boss that left you feeling she was un-thrilled with your work.

According to psychologist and researcher Barbara Frederickson, positive emotions open people up to being receptive, creative and productive.  Painful emotions shut them down.  That crucial emotional state that we think of as mood is greatly affected by environment.  That’s powerful information to apply to creating a work environment that elicits the best from each participant.

That environment includes the physical surroundings, and there’s a lot to be said about the power of space and the little rituals that make up a daily routine to catalyze the mindset for work.  But it’s not about spending millions to create the space that works for everyone – fortunately.  That’s because the impact of any physical design of space is specific to each individual.

More powerful than a new desk and corner office is the psychological climate and whether it builds or, in fact, erodes workers’ self-esteem and self-efficacy.  That climate is comprised of the sum of the simple interactions that occur throughout the day.  Whether it’s face-to-face conversation, body language, email, or slowness to respond, when interactions leave people wondering whether they’re valued, the energy that could have gone to developing a great solution to a puzzling issue instead goes to coping with feelings of inadequacy.  It’s a tremendous waste and just plain bad business.

By increasing both intra- and inter- personal awareness; that is, awareness of one’s own emotions and awareness of the impact of one’s actions on the emotions of others, the inner experience of workers can shift from a sense of foreboding to a feeling of expansive creativity.

Self Development for Managers — a few tips

• Examine your own fear of the success of others.  If your own definition of success requires you always to be the most accomplished and most knowledgeable, it’s dangerous for the people you manage to grow into their own potential.  Ultimately, that’s costly for both the team and the company.
• Beware of sending unintended messages.  Not responding to voice mails or emails can cause anxiety.  If you’re too busy to respond fully, find time to acknowledge receipt.
• Take time to learn what your team members are capable of.  People can easily sense whether you recognize them as changing growing individuals.  The most dynamic will either be excited to make great contributions to the company – or leave if they feel they’re perceived as servants rather than professionals.