wellpdx

When I was a kid my dad often attributed a bad result to bad preparation - a sort of garbage-in/garbage-out philosophy. He would then recite, “Proper prior planning prevents poor performance.” That one is six P’s. Or seven, if you count preachy. So the link between planning and performance has stuck with me, but I’ve made my own recitation. My new five P’s are: Plan - Prepare - Proceed - Process - Put away.

Plan and Process are more internal: thinking and feeling. Prepare and Put away are more behavioral. Proceed is for doing the activity itself. We all have our own tendencies, and spend different amounts of time and energy in each P. Processing is that step that helps us examine what happened and hold onto our learnings. Put away is often how we get closure and make transitions. Those last two, Process and Put away, remind us that there are things to be done after the task itself. This I find especially helpful for those who spend most of their energy building up steam but aren’t

Who are caregivers, and how do we care for ourselves?

I think anyone who has a family is certainly a caregiver on some level. Mothers fill this role more often, and men can also be the main caregiver. What about those of us who have a career caring for others?

Nurses, doctors, counselors and therapists are all in careers where most time and energy is spent helping other people. These are wonderfully fulfilling careers, and they can also be draining. How many of us come home at the end of the day and just want to zone out. We have no more energy to give, yet we have a family or at least a partner who still needs our love and attention. What do we do?

In my experience, when caregivers put importance on their own needs as well as those of others, and they invest time,

In my consultation group the other day, I was struck by two things: when we take the risk to show who we are under the surface - to reveal our feelings, thoughts, mistakes, doubts, or tender experiences we create an opportunity for deeper connection and closeness with others. But at the same time, this can leave us feeling too exposed - with fears of judgement and feelings of shame emerging.

My sense is that our default setting is to protect ourselves - to guard against this exposure, shame, and judgment - we want to stay safe. “I don’t want that person to know I messed up.” What will they think of me? It’s very frightening to be vulnerable because we don’t know how people will respond to us. Perhaps I will share something and be dismissed, laughed at, or corrected.

What feels sad to me is that I think this default setting can often be under our radar - we may not even be aware that the

Something pretty amazing happens when you get a chef in the same room as a farmer: they begin to reach toward each other intellectually from different disciplines to meet somewhere in the middle. There is a shared passion that brings both actors to the stage.

Not all farmers are people persons, and some are just downright shy. I think this is probably true of any profession, but I have found that intelligent questions and genuine interest will draw even the shyest person from their shell. And it is a lot of fun to get a farmer fired up and talking about the farm.

I am in a fortunate place because I bring young chefs out to meet the farmers, join with them talking about food, and then finally bear witness to the fruition of both their efforts: the meal. The thought and care about that final plate has been a slow, painstaking process that begins even before the seed hits the ground.

The organic farmers sift through seed catalogs to find the highest quality, non-GMO seeds. They pay for the seeds with

To find yourself
is to lose yourself.

To know our true Self, we must cease to identify with the illusory identity, which feels separated from the whole under the survival instincts fed by the ego. For the real to come, the false must leave.

Love is complicated. Just like the Zen koan above, it seems so easy but then when you really get into it you find out how actually challenging and raw it can be.

Humans have this innate desire to be in relationships and form deep connections with their loved ones. And yet often our own wounding gets in the way of our ability to be open to receive and give that love and connection. One minute you might feel fully connected and open and the next you are fully embroiled in misunderstandings, miscommunication or conflict.

In these moments of misunderstanding your heart center shuts down and you are no longer able to connect with
your partner in a loving or open-hearted way. This shutting down of the heart center not only blocks you from giving and receiving love but it also blocks you from a connection to yourself, your creativity and your ability to move forward