Traditionally, at the end of the year, we talk about making resolutions. What are the things we want to do to change our lives? We make a list and start out with good intentions, but within 30 days that list has usually gone into the garbage pail. It’s not that we don’t have a desire to change, it is that the list is too long, not prioritized, and we haven’t figured out the “why,” the real reason we want to do those things. But after a year like 2020, a year of a presidential … [Read more...]
Learning from Loss
I recently read a wonderful story in the New York Times "Things I Wish I had Known when my Dog Died" called What Emily’s Death Taught Me by Jen A. Miller. It talks about what a person experiences and learns from the death of a beloved pet. In this case, the author is a freelance writer who works at home and is single, so her pet dog Emily was perhaps even more of a beloved companion. The author learned many things following Emily’s death: - Most people will say the wrong thing. They … [Read more...]
A Person is Not a Puppet: A Quick Look at Emotional Manipulation
Every teacher can rattle off a list of excuses given by students to get out of taking a test or to excuse missing homework. If you’ve heard someone make that kind of excuse yourself, you probably thought it had no consequences. So what if the dog that ate their homework was stuffed, or they didn’t really study for the test and copied the answers from someone else? No one got hurt, right? Not quite. What if you are the person who handed in all the homework on time, and were completely prepared … [Read more...]