"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.

"The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices."      Irvin Yalom

"I expect to pass through life but once.  If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being,
let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again."        William Penn

In about a month's time I'm scheduled to go back to my old university for a reunion.  I've never been back for any kind of reunion before ... not to school, not to university, not to medical college.  Why not ... and why am I going back now?

(This post on purpose in life: clarifying future goals & the challenges we will face in achieving them, and yesterday's on purpose in life: reconnecting to meaning & values, have been combined into a handout that is downloadable both as a Word doc and as a PDF file)

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

(This post on purpose in life: reconnecting to meaning & values, and tomorrow's on purpose in life: clarifying future goals & the challenges we will face in achieving them, have been combined into a handout that is downloadable both as a Word doc and as a PDF file)

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

(This post on purpose in life questionnaires and the previous one on the importance of purpose in life for health & wellbeing have been combined into a handout that is downloadable both as a Word doc and as a PDF file)

I was struck by a paper published this month in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry - "Effect of purpose in life on the relation between Alzheimer disease pathologic changes on cognitive function in advanced age".  The authors wrote "In recent years, systematic examination has shown that purpose in life is associated with a substantially reduced risk of incident AD (Alzheimer disease), mild cognitive impairment, disability, and death.

(This & last week's social anxiety blog posts are available as a PDF file or a Word doc - you may need to 'save' the latter before you can open it)

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point"     C. S. Lewis

(This blog post is available both as a PDF file and as a Word doc - you may need to 'save' the latter before you can open it) 

"You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness."  Jonathan Safran Foer

"No man was ever wise by chance."    Lucius Seneca  

(This & next week's social anxiety blog posts are available as a PDF file or a Word doc - you may need to 'save' the latter before you can open it)

"At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time."         Frederich Nietzsche