5 Ways to Clean it Up!

In her book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, Marie Kondo has a system for how to organize your entire home. Her principles helped me discern and declutter many areas of my life in addition to my physical environment. Here are 5 of my favorites: 1. Discard first,…

Keep Reading...

Let Go to Fill Up This Holiday!

The Grinch

Holidays bring more of everything—more parties, shopping, food, drink, and expectations. We don’t actually need more to fill us up. With more time,we would probably just add more activity. More money doesn’t fill us up either, because once we have our basic needs met, more does not bring peace and joy. And contrary to TV…

Keep Reading...

Take a Mindfulness Challenge and a Vacation!

When I lived in Estes Park a few years ago, a beautiful mountain resort town in Colorado, it felt like everyone I came in contact with was on vacation. And with 100,000 summer visitors compared to 10,000 year-round residents, they usually were! But even living in Denver now, it can still feel that way. I…

Keep Reading...

The Compassion to Care

Last month I had one of the highlights of my speaking career by opening the Emergency Nurses Association Conference in Indianapolis for 2500 nurses. I felt I had really come home, not only because I worked as an emergency room nurse for 23 years, but because I also grew up in Indianapolis. In contrast, we…

Keep Reading...

The Freedom of Acceptance

I visited my 81 year old Mom last month in Illinois and it went much better than I expected, in fact I think it was one of the best visits we have had in recent years. The weather was perfect, in the mid-70’s with a nice breeze, we didn’t have any unpleasant tasks, like a…

Keep Reading...

Surprise Yourself this Holiday

I decided not to put up a Christmas tree this year. Not because I was bitter or in protest, but because I just couldn’t face spending the 4 days it takes to get the decorations out of the crawlspace, go through them, make room for them, and then clean up and put them all away…

Keep Reading...

Practice Compassion

Compassion is the desire to alleviate suffering by expressing fundamental loving kindness toward yourself and others. We need compassion because life is hard, unfair, and impermanent—for all of us. There are now studies confirming practicing compassion improves health, well-being, and relationships. Compassion makes us feel good by activating pleasure circuits in the brain. It can…

Keep Reading...

Top 10 Reasons to be Mindful

Mindfulness, being awake and aware in the present moment is so powerful because it is the only place we can decide, create, listen, act, and live. When we cultivate the kind of awareness that comes through mindfulness practices, we have the opportunity to pause and choose how we respond to the inevitable triggers and stresses…

Keep Reading...

Bring RAIN to Your Spring

Spring time here in the Rockies can give a real challenge for deciding what not to wear or if the weather is severe enough to cancel events (as I did last week). But I find the unpredictability and extremes of our weather patterns this time of year also leave me unsettled and ungrounded with feelings…

Keep Reading...

Ready to Shift into Fall? Three Things To Do

Posted by Diane Sieg on September 7, 2012 I used to want summer to go on forever, but the truth is, after living in a tropical climate that was always summer, I now celebrate the change of seasons.   Each season brings with it an opportunity to look at and experience things new again. Fall takes…

Keep Reading...