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Have you ever been told to stop complaining? Well, I don't think that we should stop complaining.

I believe that complaining is often a very good way to improve things. Effective complaining gives important feedback to people, it can result in better service from companies and employees and it can encourage people to change ineffective behaviour.

We do, however, need to complain in an effective way that is likely to bring about the change that we seek.

Here are the three essentials to an effective complaint:

1) Complain to the right person. Is the person you are complaining to in a position to make changes to what you are complaining about? If so, go ahead. They are the right person to complain to. This is the ONLY person that the complaint should be made to. Everything else is just whining and venting and tiresome to listen to!

2) Complain at the right time. We often make complaints and requests (demands!) for a change of behavior in the middle of a conflict situation. This not...

The time it takes to respond rather than react is not long.

Pausing to choose a value based response can be as little as ten seconds. The time and energy it saves you in not having to 'clean up' afterwards is immeasurable.

Let's take a quick example:

What reaction looks like: It is one of those mornings. Your 8-year-old took long to get dressed for school and is now rushing through breakfast. He spills the whole jug of milk on the table as he tries to pour it into the cereal bowl. You get angry, yelling at him, reminding him about how he is NEVER ready on time, how you will ONE DAY leave him at home so he will miss school etc etc. Sound familiar?

So now, you have spilt milk AND an upset child. You are feeling awful about yelling and are wondering on how you will make good on your threat of leaving him at home.

What responding looks like: It is one of those mornings. Your 8-year-old took long to get dressed for school and is now rushing through breakfast. He spills the whole jug of...

Did you practice pausing over the weekend? How did it go?

One of the ways that we can make the pause effective is to remind ourselves of our deepest values often.

Recently I have become aware of my temptation to become critical in conversations with certain people. This is not serving me at all. It makes me feel bad about myself as it goes against my values of supporting family and choosing kindness in all circumstances.

So whenever I am in a situation that has a pattern of triggering me, I do two things:

1) Before the interaction, I remind myself of my values related to this person or situation. Values that are much bigger and more important than the petty things that are causing me to be critical.
2) I repeat the words "be kind, be kind, choose kindness" softly to myself throughout the interaction.

I am realizing that it is SO much easier to stop myself rather than deal with the consequences of my inappropriate reactions later!

Here are the steps to doing this process for...

If we can pause for just a moment and respond with intention rather than through automatic reaction, our lives would be quite different, don't you think?

Learning to pause takes some practice – the more habituated we become to reacting, the easier and more automatic the reaction is and the greater the need to interrupt this pattern.

The first step in learning to pause is to recognize the trigger/s that cause us to react.

Recognizing the trigger means to tune into bodily sensations that signal stress or upset. These signals are always present moments before we react. They are present in the form of 'knots in the stomach', clenched fists, tight muscles, a headache, fluttering in the heart or stomach, perspiration or some other sensation.

It takes practice to connect these bodily signals to what is happening outside of us and recognize them as a warning sign that we are about to (over) react.

Here is an example:

The phone rings, and it is your mother/mother in law. There is a...

The first step in learning to choose our responses is to become aware of our habitual patterns and reactions.

These patterns of reaction can look different for different people. What they have in common is the lack of conscious choice in choosing the response.

When faced with an outside stimulus, we can react in the following ways:

1) Be passive – do nothing. I like to call this reaction 'playing dead'. This is the ultimate victim mentality. If something is going on in our lives that is not serving us ignoring it is not a good long term strategy as it will breed feelings of resentment and powerlessness.
2) Be aggressive – blame someone or something outside of our control and attack that person or thing. Again not a great strategy for living a successful life or having healthy relationships.
3) Withdraw from the interaction – slightly different from 'playing dead' as the physical/emotional/mental exit from the interaction sends a very powerful message that we are...

Continuing with reflections on the what we control and influence in our lives. Just inside the circle of concern is another circle. This is our circle of influence. The Circle of Influence encompasses those concerns that we have some impact or influence over.

So go ahead, draw a smaller circle inside your circle of concern.

The actions we take, the things we say and how we interact with out world directly or indirectly impacts things in this circle.

What is in your Circle of Influence?

In mine I might put things like my relationships, the emotional climate of my home, whether or not my children feel supported, just to name a few. I also put my health and mental and emotional wellbeing.

It is powerful and potentially life changing to actually do this exercise for yourself.

Are you unclear about where to put certain things? Do they belong in the Circle of Concern, the Circle of Influence or somewhere else? It is ok to be confused or unclear about where things go. You can move...

I recently came across this LOVELY gratitude practice which I cannot wait to share with you. It is called the Lotus of Gratitude.

Please watch this 3 minute video that explains it:

We have been talking about simple ways not to let the stress of life impact our family life.

To some extent, all of us take our families for granted. When we are out and about in the world, working or socializing, we tend to behave our best and give our best.

When we come home, we can relax and ‘let our hair down’ so to speak.

The problem is that when we consistently give the best to the world and the ‘left overs’ to the ones that matter most, our relationships suffer.

A story that really inspired me to pause and not to carry the stress of outside world into my home is the story of the Trouble Tree.

The Trouble Tree (Author unknown)

The carpenter I hired to help me restore an old farmhouse had just finished a rough first day on the job. A flat tire made him lose an hour of work, his electric saw quit, and now his ancient pickup truck refused to start. While I drove him home, he sat in stony silence.

On arriving, he invited me in to meet his family. As we...

We have all heard of (and likely experienced) vicious cycles: A bad situation or behavior that is the cause of another situation which in turn causes the first, bad situation again.

It is quite easy to get into vicious cycles.

When things start of go wrong they sometimes seem to spiral out of control. Skip one day of your exercise routine, for example, and you are likely to make unhealthy choices for the rest of the day.

Bring home a bad mood and the family reacts and makes the bad mood worse.

But have you heard of virtuous circles?

A virtuous cycle works on the same principle of cause and effect. In a virtuous cycle, things go from good to better.

One of my favorites types of virtuous circles is:
Do good, feel good. Feel good, do good.

When we are feeling good, we are much more likely to 'do good', that is behave in ways which take our day in a positive direction. The more 'good' we do, the better we feel and so the virtuous cycle perpetuates.

A pretty awesome way to live,...

Ever had "one of those days" when everything seemed to go wrong? For the next few days we will be exploring how NOT to make "one of those days" even worse!

So you have had a hard day and are at the end of your rope. You are cranky and irritable. It is nearly time for you to meet the significant others in your life.

You are itching to "have it out" with them or just to "let it all out".

Or you want to retreat into your cave without so much as a greeting.

Consider this:

The first few minutes of the interaction after you have been away from each other sets the tone for the rest of the evening.

If you can just hold it together for just for a few more minutes and greet your loved ones in a loving way, the effort will be worth your while.

It is much more productive to have a de-stressing conversation about the day's stresses after the family has connected in a positive way.