Integrate!

I am writing this from a desk on the top floor of Massey College , looking out over the courtyard on a beautiful sunny morning. It is a scene from every movie about scholars in long gowns thinking deep thoughts. It is a dream from a long, long time ago.  And it's an alarm. It's time to wake up. In 1990, I defended my doctoral thesis. One of the examiners was then the Master of Massey College. And it wasn't until today, wondering why I was reluctant to go to the dining room for breakfast, that I realized I had made a choice. I wasn't here because I needed a bed close to my training. I was here to remember, to revisit the spectacular debacle that was my thesis defense and see it with new eyes. I'm not sure why it has taken more than 20 years for me to know, absolutely, that Yeats, the poet we were discussing on the day in late summer 1990, would have been baffled by the conversation. I was young and fiery and I had written a beautiful, complex study of how beauty ...

Pain is scary. It occupies so much of our attention that it begins to feel like nothing is possible beyond it. It makes it hard to connect with our best selves, our best help, and our best goals. The best strategy for managing pain is to look beyond it, to know what you want more than you want to pay attention to the pain. This is true of emotional pain and of physical pain. Purpose trumps pain. It's a big leap for most people from wanting the pain to stop to wanting to actually accomplish something satisfying. If you would like to help someone to manage pain, try 5 reliable steps: 1) Connect with their intention to be healthy and engaged. If they really don't want to heal, they won't connect. If they do connect, make sure your presupposition is that they do want to heal and to look beyond the pain to a more satisfying experience of themselves and the world. 2) Distract them from the pain. Pain only hurts while we it engages our attention, so the first step in teach...