Creating A Vision Board

If you are up for a challenge or feeling a little bored or stuck in your life, you may want to try making a vision board for your life. It only requires a piece of poster board or art paper and some markers. This is a fun tool for getting you thinking creatively again about your life, your activities, and keeping yourself challenged and growing.

I had heard of this idea years ago, but only in the past few months as a friend shared that pretty much everything she had put on her vision board a year ago has actually manifested, did I get in gear and make one up for myself. It's a fun project that can be added to over several weeks, and may cause you to think more in daily life about what you really want to create in your life now. It's powerful, and motivating.

If it's an inside job for each person to develop themselves, become multi-dimensional, and keep yourself thriving and interesting, then we need ways to visualize the life we want. Too often, people drift through daily life, and don't set personal goals for how they wish to develop themselves over the next year.

Having a blank piece of art board and hanging it somewhere prominent in your bedroom, bathroom, or front of your closet where you will see it each day is a great way to keep yourself on track and motivated. How will your actions today help you step further toward your goals?

You don't have to draw well to do this project. There are no grades! It's just for your own use. Several of my patients have also added pictures from magazines.

Think about the fact that we all live in a box. We can grow personally by taking steps out of our comfort zone in many different directions. It will make you feel more alive, inspired and energized!

Here are some ideas to get you thinking:

Where would you most like to travel to this next year? Why don't you start to research, budget, and plan it? If not now, when?

Would you like to learn a new sport or skill? Take a class to learn something you haven't ever had time to study? Find out where you can start. Learning something new makes you really feel that you are pushing your edges.

What positive change would you like to see in your body or physical health? (Put it on the vision board like it as already happened. seeing your goal daily in this area may help encourage you to take positive steps today towards your goal for your physical health.)

Do you have a relationship goal? Would you like to make your marriage more fun or closer? Add a few more friends? Start dating? Become a better parent? Develop your patience or ability to communicate well about difficult things? Become more assertive? A good therapist can get you headed in the right direction in any of these relational areas in a couple of sessions, and give you suggestions of ways to move ahead in your personal life.

What is your work goal? Would you like to develop your work skills further, or get additional skills? If you are not excited about work, consider meeting with a career counselor about getting vocational testing. Finding a new option for your work might help you find your passion again. Recent studies show that as we live longer, most of us will have several different careers in our lifetime.
Here are some other ideas for your vision board:

Would you like to set a goal for monthly savings? Pay off your car early? Get rid of debt so you feel lighter?

Develop yourself more by volunteering for a cause you care about?

Identify ways to be more connected to your faith or spirituality?

Perhaps you'd like to improve your living environment? Get rid of the old couch you hate, and find something you love? Redo the backyard? Create a serene office space for yourself at home?

Have you always wanted to get over your fear of public speaking?

Have you always wanted to drive a race car, join a book group, or learn to surf?

Have you always wanted to go back and finish your degree? Why not now?

Would you like to add more color to your wardrobe?

Let yourself have some fun with your vision board. It's an enjoyable and creative way to bring your hidden or repressed dreams and desires into your conscious awareness and help them be realized. You're worth it! This is the only life we know for certain that you get, so get the most out of it and live boldly. It will make you a more developed, vital, and interesting person and partner. A vision board may be a secret weapon for taking back your passion from the repetitiveness of daily life.

Stepping Off The Stress Train

You know those scary movies that come out this time of year, where there are frightening phone calls coming in, and the character discovers the chilling fact that the threatening phone calls are coming from INSIDE their own house? What if your stress set point works the same way, and you have to look at your own role in whipping yourself up into being "stressed out"? In reality, you are the main person who can decide to actively change your own thoughts that are keeping you stressed, and making active lifestyle changes to deal with stress more effectively.

The good news is that you have more power than you have realized in the past to effectively manage stress. You might start by keeping some notes in a stress journal. Note what is happening when you are stressed, what you are thinking, how you are feeling both physically in your body, as well as emotionally. Write down what you did in response to the stress. Record what made you feel better or get past the stress and let it go. There are valuable clues in a stress journal, by watching for patterns that may illuminate other healthier choices you can make.

Watch out for excuses. Some people blame other people or events for their own stressed out state, not taking responsibility for their own negative internal dialogue which makes them overreact to normal events. Try not to blame stress as an integral part of your personality, your work, or your family, which negates your own power to create healthier patterns.

It's better to build your awareness of what stresses you, and make an active plan to manage the stress.

In relationships, I try to get my patients to take responsibility for their own part, rather than blaming others. Make sure you are doing good self-care, including getting regular cardiovascular exercise (enough to make you sweat), eating to keep moods stable, and weeding out those negative  thoughts which make you believe you are powerless and helpless. You're not, unless you resign!

Take a look at your schedule as well. I am always concerned that my patients schedule with regard for balance, including regular breaks and time to connect with those you love, play, exercise, and have down time. If you don't take care to preserve time for these important activities, you are by default choosing to victimize yourself, and stay on the stress train.

Try to avoid unnecessary stressors. This may mean you need to be more careful about your boundaries, and learn to say "no" both at work and in your personal life if you are already fully committed. For example, make a commitment to yourself NEVER to work through lunch. Seek out people who don't stress you out, and in fact help you relax and feel good.

Try doing less. Some people just chronically overschedule, and need to create more realistic expectations for themselves. Practice under-scheduling if this is you, and experiment with how that feels. Scheduling yourself too tightly just makes your blood pressure boil.

Be in charge of not inviting stress in to your life. Turn off news before bed. Listen to soothing music in your car. Allow more time for things than you think it will take.

Be more communicative about expressing your feelings. Keeping them all tucked inside can amp your stress up further.

Be careful not to deal with stress by medicating it with alcohol, food, drugs, caffeine, oversleeping, over-shopping, or other unhealthy behaviors that end up creating more problems and their own stress. Passive stress reducers, like watching TV, are not as good as doing something active like taking a walk outside for 30 minutes and noticing nature.

You may also want to lower your standards. Perfectionism leads to more anxiety and stress. Take a more protective stance with your own emotional and physically. Give tasks only the energy they really deserve, and don't be a spendthrift with your own energy.

Reframing stresses can also be helpful. For those stressors that you can't escape, try to keep the big picture in mind. Some stressors are temporary and will pass. Reminding yourself to keep that big perspective in mind and try to laugh about it can make a big difference in how stressed you get. Try to see the positive in what you are learning from such stressors, and how it may be making you stronger as an individual.

Do something fun or enjoyable every day, even for fifteen minutes! Squeeze in some time to self-soothe with a bubble bath with scented candles, talk with a good friend, curl up with a great book, get outside to see what's blooming this week in your neighborhood, or play with a pet. You'll be surprised how you can lower your own stress set-point through self-care.

When it comes to stress, you are the conductor on your own stress train, and only you can decide to get off it. Life is so short, and we have so much medical evidence about how our own internal stress level leads to health issues like high blood pressure, hypertension, heart problems, and many others. Don't stay on the stress train any longer than you must! You will be happier, and so will those who care about you.

The Outsourced Life

A new book by Arlie Russell Hochschild, an ethnographic sociologist, really gets you thinking about the details of your daily life, tasks, and relationships, and how outsourcing might not be progress. Sometimes more is not more; it is a bit empty and disconnected from our human spirit. Hochschild's book is The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company, 2012).

As people work more hours and are less connected to family and friends, they outsource more help for personal things, like:

child-care/nannies

chauffeuring

care of elderly parents

wedding planning

holiday cards

planning and preparing meals

shopping

cleaning

gardening

washing the car

love coaches

home organizers

holiday decorators/light installers

tutoring

college planning

surrogates

dog walkers/doggy daycare/pet waste clean-up

window washers

The writer has a non-judgmental style as she interviews both business owners and people who purchase these personal services because they are busy, aren't sure how to do them, or feel they are not good at them. Clearly, people are more disconnected from these hands-on tasks to daily living than they were in previous generations. Paying for services that are very personal adds a different element, and Hochschild is sympathetic to both sides--overworked consumers and the personal service workers who provide these services to create their own living.

The book raises interesting questions about whether we are creating social stratas that are different economically and experientially, with order-barking, fast-paced directors and entrepreneurs at the top, and emotionally attuned, patient, and human-paced mediators at the bottom. Hochschild interviews surrogate mothers who offer a "womb to rent" in disadvantaged circumstances, as well as the people who hire them. She interviews nannies and child-care and elder-care workers, and the busy, hassled employers who hire and depend deeply on them. It is a relationship which is both economic and emotionally intimate with the most vulnerable family members. There are often regrets from the employers that they can't afford to take the time to be with the baby or the aging parent themselves.

This is an interesting book that helps us examine the emotional costs of outsourcing too much in the personal areas of our life, the labors of love. While not everyone has the family or friend support to get through certain life tasks without professional help, this book is a good reminder that there is inherent value, joy, and meaning in the little tasks of caring for our children, helping our elderly parents, gardening, cooking our own imperfect holiday meals, etc. These are the little things that make us connected to those we love and care for, and make our lives both richer and deeper.

There is more to life than speed and efficiency, and we need to be aware of outsourcing too many essential life functions that make our lives more real and grounded. Don't miss out on all the messy stuff which will fill your life with more color and experiences. Work can be too demanding, and rob you of far too much if you don't set some limits. I guess this explains how pulling weeds and planting things in our garden is one of the bright spots of bliss in my week.

Getting Unstuck From Fear

This week, fear seems to be the theme. Getting past fear has come up in several of my sessions with patients who are dealing with life changes. Overcoming fear was part of the conversation I had with a friend while walking together at the beach over the weekend. When it was the topic in a meditation group I participated in earlier this week, I knew I wanted to write some about facing and moving through fear. The intriguing question that kept reoccurring was, "What would you do or be, if you could get beyond your fears?"

What do writers and thinkers tell us about fear? Louise Hay, author of You Can Heal Your Life says it's important to remember that fear is a limitation we place on ourselves. She suggests we release the need for fear and replace it with reminders to ourselves that are positive and loving. We create safety within ourselves. Hay offers us this affirmation," I am a powerful human being! I love and honor myself. All is well and I am safe." (Repeat often!)

Zig Ziglar, the amazing motivational speaker and writer, offers about fear that we should let our faith be bigger than our fears.

Dr.Wayne Dyer, psychologist and writer, says on this topic, "You can transcend any fear and self-rejection that defines your life. Treasure your magnificence and live as beings of light and love."

My favorite book on the topic of letting go of fear is the very useable and readable, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, by Susan Jeffers, Ph.D. I have often recommended this book to people, because it really helps you understand how we can get immobilized in our fears, being so afraid of making a mistake. Jeffers helps us see that if you are gentler with yourself, you can often realize that any movement out of your own small box of life can be good. It can help you get into the next sized box of life. We each need growing edges in our life, or we get bored and stale.

Many successes are a series of choices and course corrections, so try to take the pressure off yourself to have a whole path to a big goal figured out in advance. If you take one small step, the next step may get clearer. Think of driving in a rainstorm, where you can only see so much of the road ahead of you at one time. Jeffers helps us to see that the bottom level fear that most of us have is not being able to handle "it," whatever "it" is that life throws at us.

Another classic I love on the topic of overcoming fear is Gerald Jampolsky, M.D.'s Love Is Letting Go of Fear. This book is elegant in its simplicity, with lovely drawings to illustrate its main points. Jampolsky, a psychiatrist and writer, believes there are only two places people operate from in relationships, and in life: love and fear. It's far better to choose love as your base of operations.

How can you get unstuck from your fears this week which are making your world too small, and your vision of yourself too limited? Try these tips:

1. Write down your own reflections about what you would do, be, or have, if it were not for your fears.
Share your thoughts with someone you trust. Set some baby steps. For example, if you have been thinking of going back to school, your baby step could be looking at the course offerings at the college nearest to your home or office. The baby step should be something that you can do with a small amount of effort within an hour or so.

2. Use the energy invested in the fear to break through it. Let it make you mad that we are all here for a limited time, and that you have not been taking on the task of leading a bigger, more meaningful life in the present.

3. Imagine how you feel when you accomplish one of your desired goals. Take in that proud, warm, alive feeling. Channel it into more baby steps forward. Do, evaluate, adjust, and repeat.

4. Be present in the now. Fear is past and future based. Take what constructive action you can take today towards one goal. Don't use your past guilt or hurt or your fear of the future keep you using those things as an excuse for making your life the best, most beneficial thing you can create.

5. Ask a therapist or someone else you trust for help in getting started. Often in working together collaboratively, we can nudge you ahead in a more efficient way, helping you build insight as to what is getting in your way. Smart people ask for help and don't try to do everything alone.


Fear? Just because it's normal, don't let it limit or harness to create, improve, grow, and be of service to others. Recognize it, and push past it. Your bigger, bolder, better life is waiting for you to step into it!

What Do Your Relationship and Your Car Have in Common?

How is caring for a car a little like caring for your love relationship? In their new book, Cars and Love: How to be Both Lover and Friend, two of my fellow marriage and family therapists (and my upstairs neighbors at my counseling office), Tessa Kershnar, MFT, and Steve Parker, Ph.D., MFT, have taken up this challenge of helping the reader see the connections.

This little book is an easy read, and is beautifully illustrated by Analise Hannah. It has some healthy reminders for couples wanting to create an even better relationship with each other. It would be a good refresher for couples who have graduated from couples therapy, but want to have some handy tips available to recap some common principles we cover in couples therapy, such as:

*The importance of spending time together

*How intimacy begins in many little ways throughout the day, like your tone of voice in the morning, or doing something kind for your partner

*Asking for what you need

*How to keep your partner's love tank full

*Love and commitment = action

*Set boundaries with outside forces, what/who you let in your car

*Healthy ways to communicate

*Being a better listener

*Learning ways to talk things through conflicts

*The importance of having your own life

*Warning signs your car is headed for a crash

*Maintenance issues

*Getting into alignment and cooperating with each other


This sweet little gem might be especially useful to men, as the car and relationship analogy is developed. We all realize you can't keep driving your car without putting more gas in, checking the tires, and getting car washes and service. The connection to our closest love relationship is clever: if you meet each other, fall in love, and expect it to stay wonderful without any care or attention, that is a big mistake.

You can order Steve and Tessa's book directly from Tessa at her email address: tessakershnar@aol.com.

Hope Springs: Don't Ignore Your Partner

I had the pleasure of seeing the new film Hope Springs recently. I saw it with the perfect audience for this film, lots of bright seniors at a late afternoon matinee in Santa Barbara, California. They laughed continuously at all the truths packed in that movie about long-time committed relationships, and what happens if nobody's paying attention to the relationship. Basically, continental drift has occurred between the movie's lead characters, Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones.  Meryl is desperately unhappy and enrolls them in week-long intensive couples’ counseling a few states away with therapist Steve Carrell. What follows is funny, true, and touching.

I won't spoil the ending for you, but I thought I'd highlight a few of the universal relationship principles the movie explores. Here are some:

1.      Don't ignore your partner. They are not a potted plant. They are a living, breathing person that needs to have your attention, love, and listening ear.

2.      When couples drift apart, there is often (although not always) a part of that distance that each partner contributed to.

3.      In relationships, you sometimes need to decide if you want to be right, or you want to be happy. Choose peace if and when you can.

4.      Physical intimacy is like glue that contributes to a couple being closer. We all need to touch and be touched. We need to be open-minded and expressive about what we want, and how we like to be touched and courted, even by a long-term partner. Don't assume you know what your partner wants. Ask them! People usually change and evolve over time. Try to keep the intimacy thread going.

5.      Couples need some of their own activities, identity, and time apart. It's refreshing, and when you get back together you have more to bring to each other. Couples who are always together can emotionally suffocate each other.

6.      Take warning if your partner is very unhappy. The worst kind of loneliness can occur when you are in a relationship and yet feel the other person doesn't truly try to understand you or meet your needs. A number of my patients have told me over the years that they find this worse than being alone. Don't ignore this red flag and then act surprised when your beloved departs.

7.      Express appreciation that you feel for your partner. Nobody I know likes to be taken for granted.

8.      We're not getting any younger. Don't miss opportunities to join your partner in some fun activity or snuggle together. You really don't want to regret later that you didn't lean fully into your relationship.

9.      Fight for the best relationship you can have with each other. Be open to reading something new, or seeing a couples’ therapist together to have them help you break the impasse and get things going in the right direction. Tommy Lee Jones is not a happy camper about Meryl dragging him into doing couples’ counseling, but he is a better, more open man from the work they do with therapist Steve Carrell. I compare opening up in counseling being like the bear that gets a thorn stuck in his paw, and it is sore, but the bear's afraid to go to the thorn removing expert. The bear has to go through the hurt of the thorn coming out in order to heal. So do people.

10.  Don't give up easily. It's amazing the transformations I've seen in couples in relatively a short time as I have worked with them these last 20 years. Couples can go through tremendous disconnection and come back through it to a new renaissance in their relationship. Even when couples can't find their way back to each other, as sometimes happens, I think there is some peace of mind in knowing you did everything in your power to try to grow through the pain.

11.  Don't be an old grump. Remember Dr. Phil's classic line, "How much fun are YOU to live with?"

12.  Separate bedrooms are usually not a good idea. If you snore so that it disturbs your partner, be a responsible partner and see you doctor to determine if you need a sleep study to check for sleep apnea.

13.  Don't be like a memory foam pillow, and hold on to every dent. Try your best to work through things and then let them go.

14.  Don't give lousy, practical gifts to your partner, like appliances. Not romantic. At all. Ever. Am I clear on this one? Nothing says I've given up like lousy gifts, or forgetting anniversaries.

15.  Change things up a little from time to time. It will help keep things fresh.

Hope Springs? It's a good one to see. Meryl Streep was terrific, as usual. Tommy Lee Jones' character strikes a balance between angry and hurt. Steve Carrell made a pretty good therapist- sincere and direct. (Except, with Steve, I kept waiting for his sense of humor to pop out, but he plays this one straight.) It's interesting to watch the way the device of showing the couples’ therapy sessions, and the homework assignments they struggle with, move the development of the characters and their relationship forward.

Ruby Sparks: Why Perfect Wouldn't Work

I  saw a really interesting independent film this week called "Ruby Sparks." It's an engaging film,with several important messages to convey about the intricacy of relationships.

Calvin is a writer of a great American novel,as well as several important short stories when he is only 19. The story begins ten years later, as he is 29, and hasn't written anything recently. There is pressure to live up to his early success. He has broken up some time ago with his girlfriend of five years, who left him right after his father died. He seems very alone and isolated.

In a therapy session, Calvin's long-time psychotherapist, played by Elliot Gould, is trying to help free Calvin from writer's block. He suggests a writing assignment where Calvin begins to create a character of a perfect girlfriend. Calvin begins to write her, and she startles his reality by actually coming to life and showing up at his house as if they are really dating.

Amusing things unfold when Calvin tries to determine if others can see her, if she's real, or it's his overactive imagination. It's particularly funny as Calvin's brother arrives to help figure out if she's real and test her, and as Calvin takes Ruby on a weekend trip to Big Sur to meet his eccentric mother (Annette Bening) and warm but odd artist stepfather (Antonio Banderas).

Calvin begins to realize that as he continues to write his book about Ruby that he is truly the author of her character, moods, and traits. He can switch them out by writing about it. He can make her more clingy and less independent. He can make her more joyful. He can make her speak fluent French. He can even write it into her character that she loves him forever, and never leaves him.

What results from this folly is a lovely little meditation on human relationships, true intimacy, control, autonomy, and risk. Perhaps we really wouldn't want to edit out a loved one's eccentricities. Maybe it makes them the unique, separate person that we love. If we controlled the script, it would never let us see the natural storyline that is supposed to evolve between us and the other person.

Finally, it may because there is uncertainty and fragility in close relationships that they mean even more to us. You could lose that other person at any time, and that makes the time together that much more precious. There is no forever guarantee. In the end, maybe it's the differences that keep things interesting, and the fact that no human being is ever completely known to another.