Flower Mandalas Project

Something Different This Way Comes   Transformations Press (i.e., David) is extraordinarily pleased to announce the resurrection of two iconoclastic novels by Eugene K. Garber, as well as the imminent birth of his latest novel, The House of Nordquist. Gene was my mentor in fiction writing when I was a graduate student in the early '90s. We've maintained a friendship ever since. With his first two Eroica books now out of print and the… Continue Reading →

NOTE: This post is adapted from my new book The Art of Balance: Staying Sane in an Insane World. I’m posting it here because it’s the key to staying balanced when the road gets rocky.   To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill. – Sun Tzu, The Art of War To stay sane in an insane world, we need more than new tools and techniques. We also have to keep doing… Continue Reading →

This post is a reprise of one of the most popular posts from last year. It’s about how to take care of yourself when you’re too pressed for time for normal self-care. It’s one of many self-care practices in my new book The Art of Balance: Staying Sane in an Insane World, which will be on sale for a “Countdown Deal” for four days, starting Friday.  In the summer of 1979, after two… Continue Reading →

  My first experience of time as a continuum occurred when I was about ten years old. Before that, I think time was invisible to me. I was riding my bike past Johnny Sybulski’s house and I stopped, suddenly, for no particular reason. I looked at the simple brick facade, the white trim, the unkempt bushes, and I became aware of myself looking. I thought, “This is just one second in my life, and I’ll never remember it again.” But that moment is one of my more vivid memories from childhood. It marked the beginning of my sense of myself as mortal. Both of my grandfathers had died that year. In each case I had seen them nearing death in the hospital some weeks before and had seen their dead bodies in the funeral home. Perhaps that’s why I noticed that moment, or perhaps ten is when most boys begin to understand time and death; I don’t know. What I do know is that from that point on, time had a kind of linearity it had not had before, and this linearity soon became part of my backg...

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. – F. Scott Fitzgerald In our success-driven culture, there seems to be no end of helpful adages for dealing with failure. But “failure is not an option” is small comfort to those who believe they have already failed, “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” seldom encourages the already discouraged, and “we learn more from failure than from success” is scant consolation when we don’t see a silver lining in the cloud of our defeats. The problem with these guidelines is that the underlying concept of “failure” is flawed. Most of us hope we will achieve what we strive for and believe that when we don’t, we have failed. Striving for what we want is a natural part of our makeup, but attachment to the outcome of those strivings can imprison us. For a young client whose motto was “Number 2 is the first loser,” success meant being the best at anything he tried. The pressure of being Number 1 was constant and he lived in a nightmare...

The first duty of love is to listen. – Paul Tillich Failures to listen are endemic to our species. The most common complaint from parents who bring their children to me for counseling is that “they don’t listen,” by which the parent usually means that the child does not obey. When I talk with children, they likewise complain that their parents don’t listen, but they mean it literally. Failure to listen to children has subtle but enduring consequences. Kids who grow up unheard can pass on what they experienced to their own children. I discovered the value of listening carefully to children, in their words and their behaviors, many years ago. One evening, while visiting one of my brothers, I joined the family for a dinner of fried chicken. My niece, then three years old, repeatedly asked for “an angel.” My brother and his wife told her to stop complaining and eat her dinner. As her requests for “an angel” became more strident, so did her parents’ reprimands. I found myself wonderin...

If you type “self-help books” into Amazon’s “Books” category, you’ll get more than 675,000 hits, and their “Kindle” category lists nearly 300,000. That’s a lot of self-help! But how many of these books have actually helped? And how many books outside the “self-help” category have been even more helpful? Just for kicks, I drew up a list of the 15 books that, over the course of my lifetime, I’ve found most helpful, either personally or professionally. Here they are in the order in which I read them. What books have been helpful to you, “self-help” or otherwise? The Marriage of Heaven and Hell , by William Blake I first encountered this part visionary / part comic / part poetry / part etching long poem in 1969, in an English class, while an Engineering student at Cornell University. I had grown up a kid scientist, and my hope was that I’d become a NASA engineer. I was also very much in my head and not so much in my body, in the world of logic and not so much the world of emotion. Bl...

To stay sane in an insane world , we need more than new tools and techniques . To maintain sanity, we also have to keep doing the things that got us there. The final piece of the resilience puzzle is to build Balancer -enhancing attitudes and practices into our daily lives, so they are as much a part of our routines as breathing. Then we keep watch to make sure we’re staying on track. When Balancer incorporates the new tools ReBalancer uses, it gets stronger. Mini self-care then becomes something we do every day, not just when stress is high. The Experiment becomes an experimental attitude we carry with us 24/7. Meditation becomes a daily activity. Self-compassion and acceptance become the new norm. And so on. But changing habits takes time . If we don’t stay on top of our game, we run the risk of drifting back to our old, less resilient ways. UnBalancer loves when that happens! So we need a method for regularly checking in with ourselves to make sure we’re using all the shiny ne...

  NOTE: Trick-and-treat after this essay extracted from a book-in-progress about the impact of a near-death experience I had 25 years ago. My first experience of time as a continuum occurred when I was about ten years old. Before that, I think time was invisible to me. I was riding my bike past Johnny Sybulski’s house and I stopped, suddenly, for no particular reason. I looked at the simple brick facade, the white trim, the unkempt bushes, and I became aware of myself looking. I thought, “This is just one second in my life, and I’ll never remember it again.” But that moment is one of my more vivid memories from childhood. It marked the beginning of my sense of myself as mortal. Both of my grandfathers had died that year. In each case I had seen them nearing death in the hospital some weeks before and had seen their dead bodies in the funeral home. Perhaps that’s why I noticed that moment, or perhaps ten is when most boys begin to understand time and death; I don’t know. What I...

I have a small, personal favor to ask of you. So far, my attempts to get my work out into the world have had limited success, and because I have what seems to be a helpful message. I’m looking for ways to find a larger audience. I’m actually excited to be part of the Better You Bundle for Good coming in a few days. It’s a large and varied assortment of books, personal development courses, and other resources.  And for me, it’s an experiment. So, here’s the favor : Please download the free ebook   Change Your Life!  Experts Share Their Top Tips and Strategies for Reaching Your Highest Potential  This book contains nearly 100 personal development tips from a diverse group of authors and course creators,  including some of my own best advice . It’s a really interesting mix of “being-oriented” and “action-oriented” tips, and a portent of what’s to come in the  Better You Bundles for Good  package itself. Here’s the link: Download the free ebo...

Just a quick note to get your thoughts on three things: The recent makeover of this blog , which I hope is a massive improvement over the quick-and-dirty format I’ve been using until now. What do you think? I’d like to get a discussion going, so please leave comments on the blog, in the Comments area at the bottom of this post , rather than emailing them to me. The recent makeover of my BookBaby Bookshop page . Truth to tell, that’s where I’d prefer people buy Paths to Wholeness , as I actually make a profit there. It’s at:  Paths to Wholeness  BookShop Page  What do you think? I have very little ability to directly customize it, but I can pass your responses and suggestions on to BookBaby. Again, please leave comments on the blog, in the Comments area at the bottom of this post, rather than emailing me directly. How can I best encourage those of you who take the time to respond to my posts to leave comments on the blog instead of emailing me directly? I real...

INTRODUCING A FREE EBOOK: Change Your Life! Experts Share Their Top Tips and Strategies for Reaching Your Highest Potential   This free ebook contains personal development tips from nearly 100 authors and course creators,  including some of my own best advice. Change Your  Life!  is a part of the   Better You Bundles for Good  promotion happening at the end of July. The free ebook includes a wide range of inner-oriented “being” tips and action-oriented “doing” tips. It’s a really interesting mix and I think you’ll enjoy it.  It’s also a portent of what’s to come in the Better You Bundles for Good package itself. Click here to download the book:  Download the free ebook Better You Bundles for Good  will include the full-length courses and ebooks, worth thousands of dollars, for one low price, among them my own Paths to Wholeness: Fifty-Two Flower Mandalas . If you are serious about becoming your best self, you won’t want to m...

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. – F. Scott Fitzgerald In our success-driven culture, there seems to be no end of helpful adages for dealing with failure. But “failure is not an option” is small comfort to those who believe they have already failed, “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” seldom encourages the already discouraged, and “we learn more from failure than from success” is scant consolation when we don’t see a silver lining in the cloud of our defeats. The problem with these guidelines is that the underlying concept of “failure” is flawed. Most of us hope we will achieve what we strive for and believe that when we don’t, we have failed. Striving for what we want is a natural part of our makeup, but attachment to the outcome of those strivings can imprison us. For a young client whose motto was “Number 2 is the first loser,” success meant being the best at anything he tried. The pressure of being Number 1 was constant and he lived in a nightmare...