An aging Hindu master grew tired of his apprentice complaining, and so, one morning, sent him for some salt. When the apprentice returned, the master instructed the unhappy young man to put a handful of salt in a glass of water and then to drink it.
"How does it taste?" the master asked.
"Bitter," spit the apprentice.
The master chuckled and then asked the young man to take the same handful of salt and put it in the lake. The two walked in silence to the nearby lake, and once the apprentice swirled his handful of salt in the water, the old man said, "Now drink from the lake."
As the water dripped down the young man's chin, the master asked, "How does it taste?"
"Fresh," remarked the apprentice.
"Do you taste the salt?" asked the master.
"No," said the young man.
At this, the master sat beside this serious young man who so reminded him of himself and took his hands, offering, "The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things. . . . Stop being a glass. Become a lake."
— Mark Nepo in The Book of Awakening
Dealing with Difficult People
Gifted and Creative Geese
Book a session
Articles
Finding Help Through Therapy
Lisa Dau
At some point in your life, you may feel overwhelmed by the problems and life situations you experience. Oftentimes, you are able find ways to address them on your own but sometimes outside help is needed. Therapy is effective in helping relieve emotional distress and in helping you lead a more productive and fulfilling life. It is a partnership with licensed professional who is trained to.....More
Companies Aim to Combat Job-Related Stress
Carola Mamberto
Glaxo's "team-resilience program" is an example of the innovative approaches some employers are using to combat work-related stress. Experts say job stress and burnout cost businesses hundreds of billions of dollars annually in absenteeism, medical insurance and reduced...More
The Edwin Friedman Model of Family Systems Thinking:
Lessons for Organizational Leaders
David Cox, Ed.D
No good deed goes unpunished. As leaders work on managing and defining self, they will meet with resistance and the system will work to pull them back down. In systems or field theory, resistance is an automatic, mindless, natural response to a leader's initiative. It comes with the territory of differentiation and is part and parcel of the process of leadership. When leaders get feedback that they have become cold, insensitive, unempathic, headstrong,or selfish, it often means they are beginning to function in a more differentiated manner. The good news is that resistance – rather than being some obstacle that needs to be overcome – is really a systemic phenomenon that indicates the leader is successful. The trick is how one musters up the stamina to nonreactively let others run their repertoire of sabotaging responses......More
Edwin Friedman Thinking Systems
Edwin Friedman
What I want to do this morning is talk about how congregations function like families. I am going to do it from a variety of points of view. I’m going to begin with a fable. This one is called "Burnout" and it’s about a fish tank with a scavenger fish in it, you know a scavenger fish is supposed to keep the fish tank clean. I’m trying to be as realistic about it in my use of language as possible so I hope that you will appreciate that.
Once upon a time there was a scavenger fish that lost its taste for shit. (I don’t think I have to read the rest of the fable. You all got the message already!) It was your normal, garden-variety scavenger and had never previously shown any signs of being different from the other members of its species. It lived in a normal-sized tank with the members of several schools and, from the very beginning of its association with this ecosystem, seemed always to be in perfect harmony with the environment. It never got in the way of the others and they reciprocated, allowing it to do its thing......More
Links
Stress Management 