Author Archive | Michael Stephan

Loss impacts every aspect of our lives, yet we often fail to acknowledge and attend to loss in all of its forms including in times of change and crisis resulting in inadequate attention on the necessity of grieving. The grief that is commonly unacknowledged and socially unrecognized is referred to as “disenfranchised grief”, a concept […]

With the disruption, fear and chaos ensuing in the world right now, it can be challenging to maintain some balance in our lives and look after ourselves. It’s easy to become overly consumed by the harsh reality of this crisis including the sudden and drastic changes to our way of life which can quickly impact […]

We are living at a time where change is ensuing at such a pace that it can be difficult to absorb what’s actually happening around us. Technology alone is evolving so fast that by the time we get used to doing things one way, a new way has already been launched. A state of overwhelm and anxiety during this Age […]

CREATE (Calm, Relinquish, Explore, Accept, Trust, Express) 1. CALM- Look at your anxiety and seek ways to genuinely calm it. Reacting to anxiety through avoidance/resistance (often taking the form of unhealthy habits, addictions and behaviors) or expressing it in harmful and negative ways, prevents us from effectively managing it, and too often this can have a negative impact on […]

If you were to ask me a few years ago if I was a runner or a walker, no doubt I would have said the former. I have always been one to keep my sights set on the finish line when pursuing goals, yet I was also one to ignore (as much as I possibly could) the intermediary […]

The world is full of problems and challenges and individually we will all face our fair share. Typically when we experience a problem in our life we don’t feel good about it. Why don’t we feel good about it? Because it’s a problem and problems are bad…right? Think of any problem that you may experience […]

There are two primary causes for human suffering: not getting what you want and getting what you want. Somewhat of a paradox wouldn’t you think? It makes sense that not getting what you want would bring suffering, but, getting what you want will also bring suffering? Yes, it’s true….Because suffering is the only possible outcome […]

To this day, my most effective and practical teaching to overcome negative emotional states in the moment, is the simplest…Just Breathe. When we feel anxious, fearful, resistant, powerless, apathetic, angry, etc, our breathing is automatically altered. If we allow ourselves to get swept away in these emotional states and resist them, we close ourselves off […]

So often we look past the message that others are intending to deliver/express because of a simple misunderstanding of one word or phrase. We assume what the other person means based on the definition we have applied to a particular word or phrase and we believe others should see things the same way. This simple […]