Rock. Band at a fun crowded club.

To Rock or Not to Rock—Being Open to Potential Adventures

How do you approach big life decisions?

Some of these may seem overwhelming and carry repercussions that can have impacts for years to come. You may obsess and worry over them and struggle mightily to come up with the “correct” choice. But ultimately, there is no incorrect choice, as everything you experience becomes part of your story and gives you insights into your journey and your path. Something positive comes from every decision you make—you just have to be open to it and allow it to become part of your experience. Regrets can also be part of a decision, but they are also part of the experience and can result in positive outcomes.

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Moving on. Walking to the future on a new path.

Moving On—Coming to Terms with the Changes in Your Life

I’ve given notice at my job, but I have to be honest—moving on scares me. When I find circumstances or people that feel special to me, I feel like I want to hold onto that forever. Part of me thinks that if I have something good, I shouldn’t make any changes in my life. But there comes a time when I feel I have given all the energy I’m able to give and have explored everything I’m able to explore and need some new or different challenges. That involves coming to terms with the fact that I won’t be an expert in the next thing I try. I won’t have a day-to-day presence in the lives of the people I’ve worked with for many years.

This is all true, but I’ll also have the opportunity to become an expert at something else and become part of other people’s lives, even if I become a memory to the people in my life right now. We all experience changes in our lives—big changes and little changes. The effects of some of these are hard to anticipate and can be challenging to fully comprehend and assimilate.

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Discipline. A man struggling to stay focused.

Self-Control—the Good and Bad of Being Disciplined

How important is self-control to you?

We have to have some self-control or we wouldn’t be able to get by in life. We (at least most of us) have to get ourselves up in the morning, go to work, and generally do a lot of things that aren’t consistent with our impulse of the moment. So, some self-control is vital, but many of us get too hung up when we’re not as disciplined as we believe we should be, or when we’re disciplined about things that aren’t that beneficial to us. Having a good sense of our self-control and discipline and how it impacts our lives can help us develop an appropriate level of discipline and target it more effectively.

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Together. A family learning to get along.

Staying Close while Being Together—How to Keep your Relationships Healthy while Hunkering Down

We’re being advised to stay away from everyone on the planet—everyone except those we live with. We have to spend time with them. We have to spend literally all of our time with them. How can we do this without driving each other nuts?

Living in close quarters in stressful situations is especially challenging. Many of us are faced with new and unfamiliar challenges, such as homeschooling children, working remotely, or making less money. While facing these challenges we are also deprived of many of the outlets for pressure that we have always been able to count on in the past—spending time with friends, going out on the town, or spending the afternoon at a ball game. Spending all of our time in what amounts to a bunker means figuring out how to get along. It means being extremely specific and intentional about what bothers us and how to resolve those irritations without impacting those around us. It means getting to know ourselves in this new reality.

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Change. Boy Standing at Crossroads.

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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