Articles and Tools

In general, I believe the root of most of our emotional and relational problems is thegeneric issue of self-worthlessness. People who love themselves are generally happy andhighly functioning people.The most insidious dimension of self-esteem is self-hate. Dr. Blaise Aguirre, in hisrecent book, I Hate Myself, uncovers the psychological nightmare of …

“I don’t feel like it.” How often have you caught yourself saying this to yourself?Unfortunately, most of the time that we tell ourselves, we don’t feel like it, it isunconscious.What’s so bad? When we say, “I don’t feel like it,” what we’re doing is giving in to ourlower self. In …

Never make a big decision when you are feeling desperate, confused, or under pressure.You might think this is obvious but it’s not to a lot of people. I know this from my workwith singles who are struggling with deciding to marry or not. They come to me with alist of …

What we love doing, we enjoy doing. What we don’t love doing, we generally don’tenjoy doing. Identify something you really love doing, like computers, making deals,golfing, counseling, teaching, working out, or gardening. What we love doing we alsolove learning about and striving towards achieving some degree of expertise and mastery.We …

The deepest level of respect and honor I can give you is to see you as human being. Thereason why this is true is that we tend to judge others by how they appear to us, by theirroles, jobs, culture, etc. When I relate to you as my barber or …

I think most of us have a very limited and often negative experience of G-d. We eitherrelate to G-d as the fix it man, who is called on when life isn’t working out as expected,the mystery man, whose relationship with us and the world is seems impossible tounderstand, or the …

Do you think it’s possible to feel like a winner even when you’re losing? TheodoreRoosevelt did when he wrote:The credit belongs to the person who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred bydust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again andagain because …

Shame is the feeling that results when we judge ourselves as bad and then beat ourselves upWhenever we tell ourselves we’re bad for some thought, behavior, mistake, habit, feeling, desire, intention, limitation, etc. we feel shame. Shame is the emotional experience of low self-esteem. Those who struggle with their self-worth …

There are two types of anger. The first type is anger most of us experience when someone does not act inaccord with our will, needs and expectations. The guy schmoozing with the bank teller when I’m tenth inline and feeling pressured to get to the office makes me angry. When …

I tell couples all the time that they should adopt a no fight agreement. Often their response is, ”Are youserious? Everybody fights.” Yes, but there’s a difference between good fighting and bad fighting. Theno fight agreement is about agreeing to avoid bad fights. A bad fight is destructive, damaging, hurtful,disrespectful, …