Jennifer Louden
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Article
Creativity
Did you know the critical part of your self is never going away? In fact, to want to kill the critic off is just playing into the Critic's game because it is wanting to kill off a part of yourself. It reinforces the idea that something is wrong with you that needs to be fixed-- "Once I get this critic handled, THEN I'll be able to create."nnHere is what works much, much better: accept the critic but always, always remember you--the adult, is in charge. Accept that the critic
February 4, 2011
Article
The Holidays Are Coming: Do You Know Where Your Soul Is?
"Loving earth, work, one another, psyche - all these require unhurried time. Frenzied questing after the icons of modern life (speed, power, instant, more, bigger, unboundedness) devours time and injures the capacity to love. The shy soul is driven inevitably into hiding where she yearns for a time when men {and women} had time to love. The failure to find time for soul is the essential tragedy of our time." nn-Russell Lockhart, from When Men Had Time to Love nnnIt's almost h
October 9, 2006
Article
The Power of Story in the Face of Mortality
I.nThere is a story my father has told my entire life. It is 1964. I am two and he is forty-three. We live on Park Lane in Bloomington, Indiana and every morning when my mother releases me from my crib, I bump down the stairs in my night diaper and I crawl across the kitchen tile and down two more stairs to the half-bath off the family room, where my father is preparing to shave. Dad reaches down and places me on the closed toilet seat, where, according to legend, I raptly wa
September 26, 2006
Article
Being A Change Agent: An Inner Approach with Outer Impact
Change agents. We see them everywhere: theyâre the ones heading the annual food drive; lobbying the school board to get soda machines out of the lunch room; hosting family reunions; making the holiday office party more fun; and actually attending city council meetings. They identify opportunities for change and act on them-- instead of just talking about it or waiting for someone else to take the lead. We admire them for their energy and courage, and we may feel a bit uncom
September 4, 2006
Article
Accept, Serve, & Flow
I sat down to write about the self-nurturing essential of receiving -- love, energy, compliments, ideas, gifts, the Divine â and I didn't want to write. nnI kept putting it off, doing anything but writing... and then it hit me when I was out walking... I haven't been receiving so how I can I write about it! I've been cutting myself off from the flow, I've fallen into that old pattern of shining out without taking in.nnMy buddy, coach and co-facilitator of Surfing the Edge o
August 25, 2006
Article
Habit Experiments
A few years ago I spent 8 days just off Vancouver Island, British Columbia with my family; paddling kayaks, watching orcas, seeing bear eat crab, and sniffing drifting wood smoke. nnMy sister and brother-in-law came along on our adventure and they both said, at different times, "We would never think to do something like this." We watched these harried city dwellers find the burnishing pleasure of the outdoors; that moment when your shoulders drop and you settle back into your
August 18, 2006
Article
Self-Kindness, Truth, and Writing
Once when I went to a new (to me) yoga class I had a teacher say, "When we go into a pose, we can listen to our ego, which says, 'Push, push, go lower, go deeper,' or we can practice non-violence (in Sanskrit ahimsa) and truth (sattva)." nnNon-violence toward ourselves = self-kindness. I won't bully myself to do better. I will love myself into doing what is best for me. nnTruth = I won't indulge lies in my private conversations. I won't stick my head in the sand and pretend I
August 13, 2006
Article
Befriending Your Creativity
Do you secretly hold an âascetic self-flagellant, it-must-be-hard-to-be-good, thatâs for other peopleâ attitude about your creativity? nn(Don't waste your time telling me you aren't creative--life is the ultimate creative act and you are alive, or else you wouldn't be reading this). nnSelf-care and creativity are best friends--one cannot exist without the other. Yet we don't often think about befriending, romancing, inveigling our creativity. Instead we: nn* Compare our
July 20, 2006
Article
Ordinary is the New Extraordinary
Part 1 n"We have become burdened with the idea that everything must be special, or exceptional, or the very best for our children...Indeed, we do our children a disservice by trying to make life extraordinary instead of ordinary. 'Inherited potential will be realized when the environmental provision is adequate. Adequate, not exceptional. In order to flourish, children don't need the best of everything. Instead they simply need what is good enough. Consider that 'good enough'
July 14, 2006
Article
The Veiled Gift of Envy
I once spent a year obsessed with another writer's success. Envy whispered in my ear, "You should have what she has and right now." I was aghast at my obsession, especially given that I didn't particularly like her book, and yet envy wouldn't go away. It was (almost) comical how each time a fresh wave of envy broke over me, there she would be, her name in an email, her book dropping out of a bookshelf at my feet, an invitation to be on a panel with her in my PO Box. Instead o
June 23, 2006
Article
Worry Now, Cry Later
I remember when my daughter finished 3rd grade a few years ago. nI cried.nnA couple days later, she pulled out two boxes of old photos, searching for ones she could paste in her journal. I came home from yoga and stood in the kitchen, eating a rice cake with almond butter, looking at photos with her. Lilly at three and four, playing in our old house in Santa Barbara. With friends. With family members who have since passed on.nI cried.nnI went to church not long after that. It
June 16, 2006
Article
"I'll Show You!" And Other Limiting Motivations
I discovered that the fuel for many of my accomplishments in my life was "I'll show you." As a child, somewhere around 6th grade, I assessed that I wasn't smart enough to accomplish what I wanted in my life so I began to rely on sheer will to get things done. All I needed was one person to challenge me, to doubt me, and I was off. When I conceived of my first book and a friend said, "You'll never get that published. You know how many self-help books there are already?" I had
June 2, 2006