‘Midlife Matters’ Articles

Midlife can be a scary time for anyone. Life-altering changes are frequent and unexpected and often disorienting. How can you prepare for it? More importantly, how can you deal with it when it comes. It IS all a question of "mind over matter" but just telling yourself to "get over it" won't work. What will? [Continue]

Pain, whether it's from sickness or just growing pains, offers its own challenge to those of us who would move forward physically, mentally, spiritually, socially, or politically. "No pain, no gain" the old saying reminds us, but that really all depends on what we're willing to do with it when it comes. [Continue]

Dreams go bad when we attempt to unpack and move in. They are motivators, inspirations and sources of great joy. They can also become our prisons and blocks to our achieving a sense of satisfaction and contentment when we permit ourselves to get stuck in them. [Continue]

Midlife exposes the reality that, in most cases, our fears are misplaced: we fear the setbacks that may arise from outside of ourselves without recognizing or acknowledging the obstacles from within that are holding us back. The devil that we face is far more insidious than any artist's rendering could possibly suggest: we carry it around with us [Continue]

Today I celebrate my (ongoing) recovery . . . not from a physical disability, but from a dysfunctional belief system that threatened my very existence. I live in a daily reprieve from succumbing to the belief that I am a victim of circumstance. Today, regardless of the challenge, I live in the knowledge that with every breath that I draw comes a [Continue]

As we strive to clean up the wreckage left behind by our choices and behaviors, we find that the flip side of apology is forgiveness. When we see ourselves as the wronged party we have a fundamental option: forgiveness or vengeance. Which one we choose reflects on our own beliefs about who we are. Which of our beliefs need adjustment? [Continue]

In this last installment of five articles focusing on reconciliation and forgiveness, Les discusses the role that asking for forgiveness plays in completing the process that turns a failure (no matter how grave) into a successful growth experience, leading to a deep sense of strength and peace on an intellectual, emotional and (most importantly) a [Continue]

The fourth article in this series of "Cleaning Up Your Wreckage" takes on the deepest levels of pain that we experience from messing up. It's a pain beyond the embarrassment, guilt and even shame of experiencing our fallibility. It comes from recognizing that, from now on, we have to see and to do things differently. [Continue]

In our journey to examine how to clean up the wreckage left behind by the poor choices we have made in life, we come to a turning point. We've acknowledged that we've done wrong and we've expressed our sorrow for it. Now comes the hard part: what are you going to do about it? [Continue]

Every once in a while, we recognize that what we've chosen to say or do hasn't worked out the way we wanted it to. We made a bad choice and the results are there, staring us in the face. Almost before we know it, out pops an "I'm sorry!" What does an apology mean? What SHOULD our apologies mean? Why are there so many of them, and why do they so [Continue]