The Lifeworks Group, Inc.

  By Matt W. Sandford, LMHC Elephants will be dining at Thanksgiving dinners all over the country, won’t they? Our culture has used this concept of an elephant in the room when it comes to the things that are awkwardly not spoken about. Families are known to control what is spoken about and what are considered acceptable topics and are able to make it known what is off limits without ever putting it into words. And anyone who has experienced this type of thing, particularly in family situations, knows what that awkwardness feels like. If you’re the one whom some kind of wrong has been perpetrated against you feel strangled by the way your hurts have been invalidated and you just can’t acknowledge it. You are wounded again every time you are back with those people, as they continue to invalidate your hurts, communicating insensitivity, rejection, ostracism, betrayal, judgment, callousness and a lack of love. It could have been sexual or physical abuse or emotional abuse...

Brian M. Murray, MS, IMH It’s okay to be gentle with ourselves when we’re going through change and grief. Yes, we want to maintain the dis­ciplines of recovery. But we can be compassionate with our­selves. We do not have to expect more from ourselves than we can deliver during this time. We do not even have to ex­pect as much from ourselves as we would normally and seasonably expect. -Melody Beattie Recovery from addiction does not have to be a grandstand transformational performance. When a person is going through recovery they may feel as if they are on display in front of friends, family, co-workers and others. Basically, they may feel like they are being watched by everyone in their community. This feeling of being watched can leave a person feeling intimated, vulnerable and subjected to other people’s expectations and judgments of how the recovery is supposed to be. Stress, anxiety and fear of failure often result as the feeling of being watched begins to become ...

By: Matt W. Sandford, LMHC What is self care? Self care means attending to your self – increasing and/or maintaining your personal emotional well being. An objection to self care that I’ve heard people say is that it seems self indulgent. This objection is commonly rooted in the Christian understanding that our calling is to serve and focus on others. There are, in fact, scriptures that seem at first to be in support of this viewpoint. “For even the Son of Man did not come to be serve d, but to serve , and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Mark 10:45 “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4  not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” Phil 2:3-4 There are actually plenty of passages we could reference to support this idea. But I want to consider a few other passages to help us to gain balance as to the intention of the passages on serving. “Whatever y...

by Master Coach Jim Rohn Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. We do not fail overnight. Failure is the inevitable result of an accumulation of poor thinking and poor choices. To put it more simply, failure is nothing more than a few errors in judgment repeated every day. Now why would someone make an error in judgment and then be so foolish as to repeat it every day? The answer is because he or she does not think that it matters. On their own, our daily acts do not seem that important. A minor oversight, a poor decision, or a wasted hour generally doesn't result in an instant and measurable impact. More often than not, we escape from any immediate consequences of our deeds. If we have not bothered to read a single book in the past ninety days, this lack of discipline does not seem to have any immediate impact on our lives. And since nothing drastic happened to us after the first ninety days, we repeat this error in judgment for another ninety days, and on and on it goes. Why...