Pete Wiley, Author at Blocks of Life

April 4, 2020March 29, 2020 by Pete Wiley

Waiting for the Worst—Coping with a Gradual Disaster

Times like these can feel like a slow car accident. You’re in a skid and you know the crash is coming, but it hasn’t arrived yet.

Reading the news and learning about the severity and extent of the disease—the number of deaths and the impact on the economy—can cause a state of extreme stress and anxiety. Then you go about your day, and you experience all the typical sounds of your house. You see cars going by as if nothing has changed. You run into people you know at the grocery store and chat about your kids and how your families are holding up. You stop and get gas on your way home. Even though circumstances are inexorably changed, so many aspects of our lives feel exactly the same.

Self-Care. Young Woman Meditating By Peaceful Sea

March 28, 2020June 30, 2019 by Pete Wiley

Making You a Priority—Why Self-Care is Necessary for a Healthy and Balanced Life

Taking care of yourself is not optional.Many of us, when prioritizing our time and assessing our demands and opportunities, put things like exercise, meditation, and communing with nature pretty low on the list. They might feel that they have to take care of tasks that are required or necessary before activities that they might feel are luxuries or are self-indulgent.But self-care is not “time off” or down time. It is a critical part of living a healthy and balanced life.

March 19, 2020March 19, 2020 by Pete Wiley

Risk and Reward—Finding Meaning Amidst the Crisis

How are you holding up?

Do you find yourself worrying constantly and running through worst-case scenarios in your head, or are you able to remain calm, keep some perspective, and find ways to make a positive difference? As I’m writing this, the planet is facing its worst public health crisis in a hundred years. The Coronavirus Disease 19 (COVID-19) is a new[1]respiratory virus first identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. As of this writing, 209 thousand people have been infected, and nine thousand people have died from the disease. It’s pretty scary. When faced with a crisis of this magnitude—one that has implications for our very lives and livelihoods—we enter uncharted territories. We face situations, choices, and challenges that we’ve never faced before. In some cases, we have to decide between our own and our families’ health and safety and the greater good. It’s during times like these that we really come to know ourselves and what we’re made of.

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March 14, 2020June 10, 2019 by Pete Wiley

Change Happens—Embracing the Evolution of Our Lives

“I wish things could go back to the way they were…”How often have you experienced a life-changing event and wished you could go back to the way it was before? Do you wish that certain things would remain the way they are forever?There are a lot of reasons why people desire stability—they want their families to stay alive and stay healthy, they want to be comfortable financially, they want to be happy—we constantly take steps to give our lives a sense of permanence. We buy a house, save money, buy insurance, and in other ways try to guard the lives to which we’ve become accustomed.

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Vision. A woman being specific about her life vision and goals.

February 29, 2020June 16, 2019 by Pete Wiley

What We Really Want—Making Our Vision a Reality

When you think about what you want from life, what do you immediately see?Like anything we try to achieve in our lives, we will be much more likely to be successful if we are specific and intentional. Creating and continuously honing our idea of what success looks like is an important aspect of achieving our goals as well as developing goals that will make our lives meaningful. Most of us, if asked what we want from life, should at least be able to answer in general terms—raising happy, healthy children, providing for our families, happiness. But how many have a deeper or more specific answer at the ready—a vision for their lives and a path to making that vision a reality?

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