Homework for Personal Growth: An approach for self-improvement and for helping professionals

My PsychologyToday.com article today offers an approach to homework for personal growth. Much of this should be of value not just to therapists, counselors, and coaches, but to any of us in self-improvement efforts.

Should You Be in Private Practice? A debate

Being in private practice is appealing because you retain control and profits and you needn’t convince someone to hire you. But you need to market until your practice is full, something that many counselor-types are averse to. 
How might you decide? 

Perhaps the  debate I offer in my PsychologyToday.com article today will help.

In-Person vs. Remote Counseling

With traffic ever worsening, people ever busier, and free videoconferencing (Skype, Zoom, Facetime), the idea of remote counseling grows in appeal. Yet many practitioners mainly or exclusively do sessions in-person, believing it brings major advantages.

Whether you’re a client or a counselor, perhaps the debate in my PsychologyToday.com article today will help you clarify your position:

Externalities An under-considered factor in how we turn out?

Today, ever more of us is attributed to genes, from intelligence to behavioral flexibility, from self-control to political leaning.


But might our mindset’s pendulum have swung too far? Might we be underestimating the influences of environment or, to use the current argot, externalities?

To make that case, and hopefully to enhance your sense of gratitude and contentment, my PsychologyToday.com article today asks you to imagine if you were affected by any of 23 externalities.

The Case for Anger: Why calmness may not always be as wise as some gurus claim

 My PsychologyToday.com article yesterday made the case for being sad. My article today makes the case for anger.

The Case for Sadness: Why happiness may not be all it's cracked up to be

Of course, no reasonable case can be made for debilitating sadness, let alone for depression. But our perkiness-valuing society deems even mild sadness to be a character defect or at least needing of repair: “What’s wrong, Pat?”

Yet, a defensible case can be made for a mild state of sadness. Perhaps it will promote self-acceptance among people who, because of biology and/or environment, walk the earth a little less chipper than average. I tackle that in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Quotes about Work . . . and Counterpoints

Quotations are more memorable and hence are often more helpful than are tomes. In an attempt to reduce quotes’ tendency to reductionism, my PsychologyToday.com article today offers a “yes-and” or a “yes-but” for 11 quotations from the eminent.

The Lazy Person's Guide to Growing Roses

You’re attracted to growing roses because of the romantic image, the beautiful flower form or fragrance, or because your grandparent grew them.

The attraction to roses is understandable. In a world that's ever more high-tech, impersonal, and in which some people are ready to pounce if you say the "wrong" word, the peace of mind that can derive from a simple pleasure like rose growing can be appealing, especially now as we're at the year's best time to order and, in warm-winter climates, to plant roses.
But you’re much less attracted to the idea of fancy pruning, frequent feeding, let alone spraying with an arsenal that would have scared Saddam Hussein.

I'm not attracted to that either. I’ve read the frou-frou advice, even attended lectures by rosarians—Yes, that’s actually a term. I’ve even tried some of their methods and after having grown roses, over 200 in total, for 40 years now, I’ve concluded . . . Nah.

Yet I still have nice roses, maximum pleasure with minimal effort. My PsychologyToday.com article today tells how.

Yes, But: 10 Eminent Philosopher’s Quotes…and their limitations

Quotations, especially from the preeminent, can yield much benefit per moment of reading. To that end, my PsychologyToday.com article today offers 10 such quotations plus my humbly offered yes-buts, plus one one-liner of my own. They’re presented in chronological order.

Preventing and Ameliorating Counselor Burnout

What has worked for me in preventing and ameliorating burnout may not work for you, but because I know best what’s worked for me, internally and externally, I can most accurately describe that. So that’s my focus in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Becoming More Restrained or More Expressive: Should you, and how?

Some of expressiveness or restraint may be genetic and cultural and resistant to dramatic change but doubtless, some volition remains. So, in the service of your considering whether to become more or less expressive, my PsychologyToday.com article today lists restraint’s and expressiveness’s advantages and then tips for how you might go about changing.

Tough! Is being intolerant of bad behavior an underappreciated value?

Previous articles in my occasional series on values include one that invites readers to place themselves on 12 continua, and three articles on values that are tough to live by: discipline, hard work, and responsibility. 

Today’s article aggregates those three: It makes a case for toughness. It's potentially applicable in the widest range of contexts, as the article attempts to demonstrate.

Unearthing Your Foundational You: How to develop a nuanced set of core principles

Previously, I offered a simple approach to identifying your core principles. My PsychologyToday.com article today is for readers willing to take a bit more time in the service of developing a more comprehensive and nuanced set of life pillars as well as juxtaposing your current ones against your aspired-to ones.

Wisdom in Fortune Cookies

The fortune cookie may contain a prediction based on nothing, for example, “You have a bright future." Or it may be cheeky, for example, “Help, I’m trapped in a fortune cookie factory!”

But occasionally, a fortune cookie contains surprising wisdom. Having reviewed over 1,000 fortune cookie aphorisms, my PsychologyToday.com article today offers 13 that seem worthy at least of the moment it takes to consider them.

Developing Discipline

The holiday season has come and gone and, as I welcomed clients in the New Year, my pre-session small talk sometimes began, “Did you get any good holiday gifts?” They’ll say the usual: some piece of clothing, jewelry, or money donated to charity on their behalf. But alas, they didn’t get the gift of what many of them badly need: more discipline.

Many of my clients are bright, healthy, and had a good upbringing yet flounder, mainly for lack of discipline. My PsychologyToday.com article today offers three tips that have helped.

“My World is Getting Smaller and That’s Okay”

I've had clients who say that, as they’ve aged, their world has gotten smaller. In earlier years, I used to mention the research that touts benefits of getting out there but, more recently, my clients have convinced me that they’re fine with their world getting smaller. Their argument generally goes something like, “I’ve grown self-conscious about my physical and mental aging. So, both to avoid embarrassment and so I can focus my life on the things I still can do well, I restrict the amount of social and other outside activities.”
 
Instead of pushing such clients outward,  most of such clients have benefited more from my asking them questions and, if needed, making suggestions that lead them not to expand their world but to make more of their smaller world. My PsychologyToday.com article today offers some of those suggestions.

Searching for Someone Who Embraces Your Authentic Self: Six sources of hope

You’ve tried it all: online dating, set-ups, flirting as the spirit moves you. All in hopes of meeting that very special someone, that person who not only accepts you for your individuality but embraces you for it.
But it’s been years and you still haven't found someone truly right. 

Of course, life ain’t the movies and it’s far from certain that your magically perfect person will ever be yours, let alone be yours forever. But as a break from my usual incessant practicality, my PsychologyToday.com article today offers my best shots at finding the key to your lock.

On One Hand, But on the Other Hand....

From Plato to Stephen Covey, it’s long been argued that a life is more meaningful if guided by a foundational personal philosophy.

To that end, My PsychologyToday.com article today  describes six tensions the resolutions of which can be core to developing your personal philosophy.

Options for Substance Abusers

Substance abusers have a hard time resisting substances' easy short-term feel-good, no matter their long-term liabilities. Perhaps one or more of the ideas in my PsychologyToday.com article today will help.

Come see me play a mini piano concert this Weds?

This Weds 7:30 to 8 PM, I play a mini piano concert at The Marsh Cabaret in Berkeley: Standards, show tunes, ragtime, + my own own compositions. After, the Craig & McGregor band plays quality jazz + Jefferson Starship singer Darby Gould: Just $10, including a free buffet!

The Zen of Bowling

Many people tend to think of bowling as Neanderthal, if only because it was a key recreation in the Flintstones cartoon.

Yet, as in all sports, competence and enjoyment is enhanced to the extent that one can be Zen about it.

Even if you’ll never again pick up a bowling ball, life lessons are embedded in the Zen of bowling. I describe them in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Tips for Anger Management

Anger-prone people usually pay a big price professionally, personally, and in their health. 

My PsychologyToday.com article today aims to help. First, I offer common scenarios likely to trigger anger and how the anger-prone person might wisely respond. After, I list the embedded principles for dealing with anger-proneness. I conclude with a few tips on how to deal with an angry person.

Dealing with Sadness: Self-help tactics

Going through life a little sadder than average isn’t necessarily a negative: It can feel mellow to you and to others who could use respite from today’s 

overstimulating existence. The key is to avoid mild sadness from descending into the pit.

My PsychologyToday.com article today offers five experiences that would make anyone sad. After, I list the embedded principles for coping.

Worry: Self-help tactics for reducing anxiety

There are two categories of worrying: about a specific issue or general worrying. My PsychologyToday.com article today offers suggestions for each.

Making the Most of Counseling, Psychotherapy, or Coaching

You’re spending time, probably money, and emotional energy on counseling: whether psychotherapy, career counseling, personal coaching, whatever.  Yes, choosing a well-suited counselor matters, and a previous article focused on that. But making the most of your counselor can be at least as important. I offer tips in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

8 Simple Self-Help Tactics: Ideas for the worried, the sad, and the angry

Of course, severe problems usually require professional help but garden-variety sadness, worrying, and anger can often at least be moderated with simple self-help tactics. Perhaps you’ll find one or more of these worth trying.  

In my PsychologyToday.com article today, I list them in order of what’s been most helpful to my clients.