Tag: Self-help

LK LohanLeave a comment

Relationships, and Keeping Score

I’m just coming off of one of those post-Holiday conversations where one family member rants about another family member: “He never calls.” Voice heavy with reproach. Disappointment. Anger. “Why should it always be me who initiates contact? I’m not going to call again. If he wants to talk to me, let him call for a change.” And if he doesn’t call, either the relationship withers and dies, or the person who’s complaining reaches for the phone after all, full of resentment, and what could have been a perfectly good conversation, sours. It doesn’t have to be that way if you Read More …

LK LohanLeave a comment

Better Living through Characters

I’ve been immersed in my story world for such a long time now that in some ways it feels more real than the real world. The characters, though, aren’t old friends. Well, some of them are. Others, though, are a part of me. Or, rather, parts of them are parts of me. Some of their traits and attitudes and idiosyncrasies are lifted from my own experience. And this is where it gets interesting: At the intersection of fiction and life. Your own gut reaction to any situation you put your characters in tells a story about your own… well… character, Read More …

LK LohanLeave a comment

The Year of Routine – Take Two

At the beginning of this year, I mused about the life of endless routine that the pandemic had brought me. Now, six months on, I’m extremely fortunate that this routine is all the pandemic’s brought me. And yet I spent much of the past year with that edgy feeling that I was wasting time – a non-renewable and fast-dwindling resource – and that life was passing me by. So I actively sought to break the routine, to introduce novelty into my life in an attempt to slow down the subjective passage of time. Did it work? Well, up to a Read More …

LK Lohan

Self-help Doesn’t Work

Self-help doesn’t work – until you’re ready to hear the message. To use another cliché: The teacher will come when the student is ready. The self-help field is often maligned as pop psychology, but it does the job for those of us who like the summarized, pre-digested version as a starting-point for further research. And, often enough, the short version is sufficient for our needs. The field of self-help is as vast as people’s “issues”. If a particular issue isn’t an issue for you, well, you get to skip that section of the bookshelf. Just make sure that you don’t Read More …