The Lifeworks Group, Inc.

  By Matt W. Sandford, LMHC So, it’s the New Year again. And probably almost everyone will be thinking about New Year’s Resolutions or plans or desires about what they want to achieve during the year ahead. We seem to be oriented this way – to take stock once a year – to mark off our life journey, and use intervals to review and evaluate our course. That is what you are doing, right? Right? I bet I probably had you with the first part – the part about making goals for the year ahead. But what about the next part – of evaluating and reviewing your course? Might you be doing the one without the other? If I’m right, I would say that if so you would be among the majority. It seems to me that many folks had all kinds of dreams, plans, goals etc. of where they want to get to or what they want to reach or achieve. But only a small percentage of those invest in reviewing their course direction, as it were. What I mean is, there are a lot of us Americans who really like to g...

Brian M. Murray, MS   “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” ― Thomas A. Edison   Hope can be a powerful force. It drives the future with a sort of romanticized vision with excitement and enthusiasm. Whether it is with marriage, having children, an exciting career or a certain lifestyle, hope and dreams drive the motivation and inspiration to achieve that dream. Sometimes, however, those dreams get crushed. Reality steps in and begins to paint a bleak picture of that future and over time the anticipation begins to fade. The vision gets lost, the hope disappears, motivation wanes and life can feel stuck. It’s almost as if the color gets washed out of the dream and it loses its luster appearance and develops that sense of hopelessness. How does someone who is feeling in despair about their life bring hope back into the picture? Feeling like being in a hopeless situation does not necessarily mean they have to abandon hope itself...

By Matt W Sandford Everyone, I think, has goals and dreams: a great job where you are respected and with travel opportunities; finding “the one” to spend your life with; becoming a Mom or Dad; starting your own business. But many of those dreams are not realized and sometimes the dream is found and then lost. I know this personally. My wife and I had reached our dream, but then in flash, it was gone. Many times it’s not just that a dream has to be put on hold or doesn’t materialize, but that “life” interferes in cruel ways through hardships of all kinds, like injury, chronic illness or disease, death of loved ones, financial loss, crime, or natural disaster. A dream can be broken slowly over time or could go up in smoke in a flash, but the loss of our dreams is like experiencing a kind of death. We seem wired to dream and make plans. When someone has no plan and has no interest in making plans for their life, most would believe that there is something wrong. Without drea...

  By Matt Sandford In a previous article I provided some tips for sorting out the differences between shyness, introversion and Social Anxiety Disorder. This is a companion piece meant to offer suggestions for addressing the skills of the person struggling with shyness. I believe it can certainly be helpful for those who identify as introverts or those struggling with SAD as well. Let me explain here something specific concerning introversion. Unlike shyness and SAD, introversion is a personality trait, and therefore the goal - my goal - is not to change it. No one’s personality needs to change in order to be fulfilled and be their best self. Our goal should be to mature, to grow. We may need to become more comfortable with whom we are, but we don’t need to change our identity. Maybe you need to understand and discover your identity, but that’s not changing it. My desire is to provide some helpful skill development, but what that means is simply developing and honing y...

By Chris Hammond Have you ever Googled “eliminate stress” only to find a long list of impossible tasks from people who obviously don’t have a job and aren’t married with kids?   My personal favorite ideas were to quit work (really? because last time I checked you work to earn money to care for your family and quitting work would add considerable stress to your life), have an open schedule (this is laughable as my schedule is almost entirely dictated by my kids’ activities), and avoid difficult people (yes, that is really possible when you work with difficult people all day long).   You already know that you need to reduce the stress in your life but having ridiculous suggestions about how to go about it only increases stress and gives you the impression that reducing stress in your very busy life is impossible.   It’s not. Here are a few suggestions that have been tested and proven to be effective by very busy people like you. 1.     ...

By: Matt Sandford In part four of the series, we discussed ways to balance between short and long term goals in our parenting. In this last section we will examine the issue of our children’s development towards autonomy and ways we can effectively nurture this process. 5.        Foster autonomy ·          In the teen years it becomes more readily apparent that your kids are not going to be under your roof forever. Some of you are excited about this, and some are broken up about it. But either way, it has been what you have been actually working towards all along: to see your kids grow up. ·          Autonomy is a big part of maturity. Autonomy means to be self governing, self directed. Not in the childish sense of – I want my way! But the maturity to make decisions about what is best based on sound principles. Autonomy goes best when paired with responsibility a...

In part three of the series, we took on the difficult challenge of letting go of control. In this section, the topic is managing our short and long-term goals and how keeping these two in balance affects our approach in parenting. 1.        Hold Onto Both Short and Long Term Goals ·          We all have them: short-term goals, usually being what I want to accomplish right now or today or this week, and long-term goals, usually what I want to accomplish over the next few months or years. Some of these goals we are consciously aware of, and others lie in the back of our minds and surface periodically or when provoked into consciousness by obstacles to their fulfillment.   But, whether or not we are aware of them, I believe we are generally purposeful people who are directed by our heart goals. However, sometimes our short-term goals run counter to our long-term ones, and we may not be mindful of how our ef...

By: Matt W. Sandford, LMHC Conflict, arguments, tiffs, misunderstandings, hurt feelings, angry words, cold stares, sighs, rolling eyes, sarcastic rebuttals, grunts, stomping off, the silent treatment and so much more. If you’re in or have ever been in a relationship you know what I am talking about. No relationship is immune to communication challenges. My goal is not to actually remove them completely either. One, that would be unrealistic, and second, I believe that conflict can be productive. You see, conflict can be about two people working towards understanding and intimacy. However, in order for it to be productive, we need to address some of the obstacles to productive communication. I will provide some guidelines on three common stumbling blocks, however, bear in mind that there are other types of communication issues. The principles behind these guidelines are that we all long to be understood and that we all long to feel safe. Managing these two fundamental needs often l...