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Published: 25 September 2017

If I were to ask you “what ultimately do you want from life?”, many of you would answer “to be happy”; “to have money”; “to have success”; etc. We seek answers from life, while our culture answers with “get more stuff and gain fame then you will feel happy”. Will this suffice as your answer to your life question? Is that really what you want, or is there something else, something deeper for which you long?

During my time as a counselor I have worked with clients from every socio-economic status. Regardless of money or available material resources, everyone was seeking a common answer, namely, how to get a deep feeling of peace. As a result of their life struggles they came to realize that material goods and wealth is fleeting and can be lost. Therefore, they could no longer find satisfaction in material goods.

What makes me different from other life coaches is that I'm not promising you your dreams. I work in leading you to find inner peace, resulting in a self love expressed in action. My goal is not to make you successful, rich, or famous. I don't care if you succeed or fail in aspects…

Read more: 5 Reasons Why Mindfulness Matters

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Published: 13 September 2017

To cultivate self love is such an important aspect for our health yet many of us either don't think of loving ourselves or feel that we are unworthy of self love. To love is not an easy task yet we find it much easier to love others then to love ourselves. Why is this? I believe it's because we know ourselves too well that we find it difficult to cultivate self love.

The idea of loving humanity is easy to grasp since we don't have a personal relationship with all of humanity. I can feel a sense of love for the poor or those affected by natural disasters, because I don't know them and therefore don’t know their flaws. Once we know a person's flaws we judge them to decide who is worthy of our love and who is not.

Since we are aware of our own flaws many of us have judged ourselves unworthy of our love. We may even feel uncomfortable when others express their love for us, but we can let that go since we understand that they do not know us as well as we know ourselves. We may even tell ourselves that if they did…

Read more: How To Cultivate Self Love

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Published: 05 September 2017

Nowadays, the unfortunate reality is that many of us have been affected in some way by addiction. We personally may not be the person suffering from the addiction but odds are there is someone in your family or circle of friends who either is currently addicted or is working on a program of recovery. The latest opioid crisis has brought addiction to the spotlight, but addiction as a problem has been around for decades.

More and more families are affected by addiction and are seeking ways to cope with a situation that places any family in a crisis mode. Even the healthiest of families find their world turned upside down when needing to deal with a family member suffering from addiction. I have worked in the addiction field for a couple decades and have seen the positive outcomes of recovery and have witnessed how families have gone from their lowest points to becoming healthy and whole. I am not saying this is easy, but I am saying it is possible.

Before I get into discussing the impact that addiction has on a family and what the family can do to cope with the addiction, I would like to offer a…

Read more: How To Cope When Addiction Runs In The Family

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Published: 15 August 2017

As a counselor and a life coach, it is unfortunate that I wasn’t provided any formal education to prepare me to use mindfulness. But, after becoming personally aware of mindfulness and how it led me to find my inner peace, I made it my mission to teach people how to find your inner peace.

Historically, the arrival of mindfulness to the US is attributed to Jon Kabat-Zinn. Kabat-Zinn is Professor of Medicine Emeritus and creator of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Kabat-Zinn was first introduced to the philosophy of Buddhism while he was a student at MIT. Later, in 1979, he founded the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he adapted Buddhist teachings on mindfulness and developed the Stress Reduction and Relaxation Program. He later renamed the program “Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction” (MBSR), removing the Buddhist framework and eventually downplayed any connection between mindfulness and Buddhism, instead putting MBSR in a scientific context. To this day Kabat-Zinn downplays the connection of mindfulness to Buddhism, yet I feel his downplaying of Buddhism is a means of bringing mindfulness into the…

Read more: How To Find Your Inner Peace