Joy and Balance

Does Your Family Bring Out in the Worst in You? Would You Like to Be More Resourceful?

Scott Mills, Ph.D.

Clients tell me all the time that that their families drive them crazy!  They go home for the holidays or even talk to their mother on the phone and it's like they are ten again.   Do you ever have this feeling?  If you do, the short audio exercise that I've created will help to create new possibilities while you simply sit back and relax.   You can download it below.  Please feel free to share this with friends and colleagues that you might like to help be more resourceful in their lives now. 

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Scott Mills, Ph.D., is an expert in human change, development and achievement coaching individuals and organizations in the U.S. and Canada. His book, Awake Parenting: Parenting with Purpose, Presence and Power has been receiving rave reviews from parents across the country. He is currently working on a new book called Waking the Heart. He brings a diverse background from the world of art, theater, spirituality and psychology to his work to his workshops as well as his individual clients. To find out more about him check out www.joyandbalance.com

Letting Go of Your Emotional Baggage: Emotional Discharge Technique 1

Scott Mills, Ph.D.

The past hurts as well as the anxiety we carry around can be exhausting.  Our lives can feel limited by things that are long since gone or far into our future.   In this first of a series of videos on emotional discharge, I offer a simple process that you can do right now to release some of that tension and create more space in your life!

Allowing Your Success Momentum to Carry You Forward

Scott Mills, Ph.D.

For most of us where there is a new challenge in our lives, like finding a new job or learning a new skill, there is a nagging little voice in the back of our heads that tells us that we can’t do it.   It probably is busy inventorying all the ways that you have failed in your life and the many ways that you might just fail in your new venture.

But unless you were born yesterday, literally, you’ve had way more success in your life than you are probably giving yourself credit for.  Doing a success inventory and keeping it nearby when you hear those nagging thoughts is a great way to boost your confidence and remind yourself how capable you are of succeeding.

A success inventory is simple.  From your earliest childhood memories to the present, make a list of a minimum of 101 successes that you have had in your life.  Starting out small, you learned to walk and to talk, you probably learned to ride a bike and swim.  You may have graduated from high school or college.  Take the time now to do this inventory and post it somewhere you can see it.  Your new challenge is being backed up by a great wave of success.  Simply let your current challenge be the next one!

Scott Mills,Ph.D. is an expert in the world of work life balance.  As a life coach and consultant he works to create passion, purpose and power in the lives of extraordinary people just like you. You can read more of his blogs or find out more about him at www.joyandbalance.com

If the Buddha Got Fat: A Mindful Path to Weight Loss and Abundant Health

Scott Mills, Ph.D.

In the West, we have adopted a feast (literally) or famine mentality to health.  We seem to either eat whatever we want to, whenever we want to or we starve ourselves to lose it all.   After experiencing both the life of luxury in his father’s palace and then the life of an ascetic starving himself away, Buddha came to what he called the Middle Way.   No where is a middle way more needed than in our relationship to diet and health.

As a life coach, I am very familiar with helping people make change in their lives.  And I know that the feast or famine approach doesn’t work.  Neither does relying on the authority of whatever latest health guru has published a diet suggesting you eat nothing but watermelon or everything but bacon.   As Dr. Dean Ornish has found repeatedly in studies funded by the National Institute of Health, Mutual of Omaha Insurance and other scientific bodies, we can decrease our weight and increase our health so that we feel more energetic, more flexible and stronger when we have the right tools and support.

Inviting Change with Gratitude: Mindful Practices to Create Change in Your Life

Scott Mills, Ph.D.

In the Western world we are suffering from destination addiction.  We are always trying to reach the finish line and often don’t even notice as we round the track.   When we reach the goal we rarely spend much time appreciating it.   Rather we take off for the next goal.

But what if you don’t reach the goal?  Does that mean that no learning, no living, no growth happens along the way?  For many, the answer is yes.   This narrow view of looking at the world not only robs the joy from our lives it also closes us down to the many opportunities we miss along the way while we are not paying attention.  One of the most powerful things we can do to foster positive change in our lives is to pay attention to it as it happens.  Here are four suggestions for how you can do that more often.

One Breath at a Time: Supporting Mindful Change through Structure

Scott Mills, Ph.D.

One of the best ways to ensure failure is not to plan for success.   While I am a big fan of setting our intention and hoping for the best, we can do a lot more than that to make sure that the changes we initiate in our lives last. 

In my work with clients, we use what’s called an integral model of change.   It means that for change to be lasting in has to address four major ways that people are in the world: their heads and hearts, their bodies, their communities and their environment.  Preparing some ways to support yourself through your efforts and those of your friends and family can make the difference between a wished for change and a realized change.

Help! My Friends Don’t Want Me to Change: Building More Supportive Communities

Scott Mills, Ph.D.

    Our friends can be our greatest support in creating change in our lives or they can be our worst enemies.   Depending on their capacity to adapt and appreciate change, our efforts to expand our lives can be welcomed with open arms or rejected.   The incredible power of a strong group of supportive friends to make change possible for us makes this a hard dynamic to ignore.

    James Flaherty, President of New Ventures West, says that many people “feel sentenced to our friends.”   But relationships, just like people, grow and change over time.   When we are lucky and skillful, our groups of friend grow together and can support each other in that process.  If that isn't the case you might want to consider they ways you are relating to your friends and see if you can shift those patterns.  

It Takes More than a Village: Change Happens in Community

Scott Mills, Ph.D.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could decide to make a change in our life, declare it to ourselves and it would be so?  That’s how most of us decide to create change in our lives.  We go it alone trying to force change into our lives.   And many, many of us fail because this approach is too exhausting to sustain.  However, there is another way.  We can connect to a community that will helps us through the process of change.

If you’re like most people, you probably don’t believe that community makes much of a difference.   However, regardless if its with the support of a friend or a whole group of people, the impact of support groups is overwhelming.  For example, in a study of women with breast cancer those who went to a support group had a 50% higher survival rate.   For those who are trying to quit addictions from overeating to overspending to drugs and alcohol, the positive reinforcement of groups is clear. 

Risking Our Hearts for Change

Scott Mills, Ph.D.

It seems that we have all come to the conclusion that the world is in chaos and there is little that can be done.  I often find myself in conversations with friends where I try to point all the amazing work that is being done around the world, the changes of hearts and minds that are happening around every corner.  But risking hope feels like too much to ask.  Instead we can tear down possibility, wait for other people to create change and at least maintain our small view of the world when the actions of others fail.

But great men and women, instigators of change across the globe, have always known that, as Ghandi said, "We must be the change we wish to see in the world."  If we want peace, we must first bring peace to our minds and our hearts.  We must carry that peace into all of our actions.  And we must be willing to share in the risk of change with our brothers and sisters who are working for a better world.

Being the Change You Wish to See in the World: A Different Kind of Resolution

Scott Mills, Ph.D.

Making radical changes in our lives often come from seemingly small places.  In a call catching up with a good friend the other day she told me that this year she was creating the possibility for herself to be joy.   She had shifted her thinking around joy from something to be acquired (outside herself) to something to be lived (always accessible).  This small change in thinking embodies the words of Gandhi when he said “to be the change you want to see in the world” and it provides a powerful example to us all.  Changing our perspective can change our lives overnight.