Brenda Knowles's Blog: Space2live, page 12

How You Were Raised and How It Affects Your Relationships

It's summer and I'm getting married next month. My posts over the next few months may be lighter, shorter or even non-existent. There are a lot of new dynamics at play in our now household of seven. My time and energy are devoted to making these go smoothly. Since we have been meshing my fiance [...]

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When an Introvert and an Extrovert Combine Households

Things are getting serious here in the Minneapolis suburbs. Over Memorial Weekend Mark (fiancé), his two sons (ages 22 and 18) and their cat moved into the home I've been living in with my kids for 14 years. The actual move went relatively smoothly. Mark and I chipped away at the packing and unpacking. Now [...]

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Dislocation and Addiction

The precursor to addiction is dislocation. — Bruce Alexander Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Simon Fraser University. In the quote above, dislocation is taken to mean the loss of psychological, social, and economic integration into family and culture — a sense of exclusion, isolation and powerlessness. In the much quoted book on addiction, "In the [...]

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Three Steps for Moving Through Personal Struggles

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you have seen me struggle to learn and evolve into something more than an overwhelmed and at times sad, mother of three. Over the last eight years of writing, I've went from learning who I am to studying relationships with the hope of improving mine, to [...]

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Ambition and Peace at the Same Time? Is That Success?

On The One You Feed podcast, Eric Zimmer (host) and his guest, Skip Prichard, talked about success and how to find it.  Skip said that success is when ambition and peace exist in the same measure at the same time. They talked about how Buddhism teaches that we suffer when we want more, therefore we [...]

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Two Methods to Alleviate Social Anxiety

What is social anxiety? In my book, The Quiet Rise of Introverts, I define social anxiety as the fear of social or performance situations where embarrassment, judgment, criticism or rejection are perceived dangers. Somewhere along the line, as someone with social anxiety, we learned that we do not fare well under scrutiny. We fall short [...]

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Core Emotions That Run Your Life and How to Manage Them

According to Dr. Jonice Webb (Psychologist and author of one of my favorite personal growth books, Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect), "A Core Feeling is the one emotion that you experienced the most often, or intensely, growing up. It becomes embedded in the software of your brain. As an adult, this feeling [...]

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Collecting Our Children and Partners: 4 Ways to Regain Connection

At the top of our agenda we must place the task of collecting our children — of drawing them under our wing, making them want to belong to us and with us.  — Gordon Neufeld, Hold On to Your Kids In our busy culture of independence, it is easy to lose connection with our kids [...]

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Do You Have a Growth or Fixed Mind Set? Believing in Our Personal Power

People who have a growth mindset and who see themselves as agents in their own lives are more open to new experiences, more willing to take risks, more persistent and more resilient in rebounding from failure. — Susan David, Emotional Agility This sense of agency intrigues me. I admit a low tolerance for people who [...]

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Are You Happy Avoiding People?

My daughter told me the other night that Lyft is offering an option on their app to not talk to your driver. I looked into it and it seems they are considering creating something called 'zen mode' which by clicking on a button or link, will let your driver know you don't want to chat. [...]

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