"When I get to heaven, they will not ask me 'Why were you not Moses?'.  They will ask 'Why were you not Susya?  Why did you not become what only you could become?'"                    Susya, a Hasidic rabbi

          "Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."                                                                                                                                Jalal al-Din Rumi

“

Empathy is innumerate.

” - Paul Bloom

This chapter will aim to cover areas like - What are values?  Schultz’s research findings.  Respected figures.  Evolutionary psychology.  Self-determination theory, key needs, goals & motivations.  ‘Mentalities’ & behavioural response systems.  Funeral speeches.  Clarifying & setting goals.  

“ Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. ” - George Santayana

"Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was but vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible."    T. E. Lawrence

"When I get to heaven, they will not ask me 'Why were you not Moses?'  Instead they will ask 'Why were you not Susya?  Why did you not become what only you could become?'"  Susya, a Hasidic rabbi.

                              (This blog post is downloadable as both a Word doc and a PDF file)

When I get to heaven they will not ask me, “Why were you not Moses?”  Instead they will ask “Why were you not Susya? Why did you not become what only you could come?”   Susya, a Hasidic rabbi

"Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy."  Thich Nhat Hanh

(this post is downloadable both as a PDF file and as a Word doc)

"Those who do not have the power over the story that dominates their lives - the power to retell it, reexperience it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change - truly are powerless because they cannot think new thoughts"     Salman Rushdie

I wrote a first post a few days ago entitled "Going back for a university reunion: stirring up memories, avoidant attachment, "puffing up" and kindness (1st post)".  I mentioned psychiatry professor Irvin Yalom's suggestion that going back to reunions like this can stir up material that can be chewed over to yield helpful new insights.  It's happening.  And I'm encouraging it to.

Earlier this year I used Google Analytics to identify the most read pages on this website and I wrote the post "Update on website traffic: the ten most popular blog posts". I then wondered - "What are my own personal favourites?" and I quickly realised that the posts that I've written that have had the most impact on me and my practice as a therapist are nearly always made up of sequences of blog posts rather than just individual items. I said that glancing back over the last year or so, themes that stood out included mindfulness, therapist feedback, self-control, conflict, embodied cognition and positive psychology. Going further back still there are the posts about interpersonal groupwork, relationships, therapeutic writing, walking in nature, compassion, exercise, healthy lifestyle, attachment and goal setting.