MSI Press Blog

  Today's meditation from  Weekly Soul: Fifty-two Meditations on Meaningful, Joyful, and Peaceful Living   by Dr. Frederic Craigie. -39-   Forgiveness is essential in life because we make mistakes all the time. Sometimes we’re put in impossible situations where people get hurt even when we’re doing the right thing; a boss who has to fire an employee who is undermining morale, for instance, or a mother who has to stop giving money to her drug-addicted son. How do we forgive ourselves when we cause others pain, knowingly or unknowingly? The first step is to keep out hearts open to our own remorse rather than deflect it with anger or self-justification. Then we respond compassionately with ourselves, in words or deeds.   Christopher Germer   A nurse in her early 30s described a painful and emotionally wayward background, during which she had flirted with substance abuse and had a series of relationships with needy and clinging people. As she was getting her li...

  excerpt from Life, Liberty, & Covid-19 SELF-COMPASSION When we blame others with such vehemence, it is a good indication of a hidden, unacknowledged self-blame. We used to say as kids, “It takes one to know one.” Another way of saying it, “If you spot it, you got it.” That is called projection, as we discussed regarding prejudice. What we hate in others is what we cannot tolerate in ourselves but disown. We get rid of what we despise in ourselves by casting it onto others and then berate them for it. There is only one way to escape the blame game. Beginning with ourselves, we give up the harsh self-judgment. The first step in self-compassion, forgiveness, is to become attuned to our own suffering, which has several aspects: Losses During the pandemic, we suffer so many unavoidable losses. Our lives have been turned upside down. Most tragically, family members may have become infected and died. We could not be by their sides during their sufferings because of the quar...

  From MSI Press author Fred Craigie --  Permission to Rest: Reflections for International Self-Care Day Frederic Craigie, PhD Frederic.craigie@gmail.com Self-care is vital for a sustainable and meaningful life. Some approaches and perspectives on self-care may feel arduous and unattainable. I have always had plenty of aerobic exercise, but I struggle in my semi-retirement years to get the strength-building exercise that I know I need.  Self-care, though, also has to do with the personal values, priorities, and perspectives that we set for ourselves. My friend and faculty colleague at the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine, Siri Chand Khalsa, MD, MS, speaks of her journey with Covid. Like many of us, including me, she tested positive for Covid, but as the days and weeks progressed, she realized her symptoms weren’t going away. In the early days of the pandemic, Dr. Khalsa was one of the first people to experience what we now call “long Covid.” She suffe...

HAPPY NEW YEAR ! Every time I get the urge to exercise, I lie down until it passes. Mark Twain   New Years!   The Times Square ball, confetti, Guy Lombardo (for people of my vintage) and… New Year’s resolutions!   Most of us make some kind of resolution for the New Year. It’s a good opportunity for a fresh start. Change isn’t easy, though, and lapsed New Year’s resolutions are certainly part of the common lore of our culture.   There is no lack of advice out there about how best to manage the resolutions we set for the year to come. Set clear goals (I prefer the word, “intentions,” by the way). Write them down. Check in regularly about how you’re doing. Enlist the caring and support of somebody else.   These are perfectly fine ideas that I’m sure you have heard before. I want to share with you, though, three ideas that get less press, that arise from some combination of empirical literature and my own experience working with people for a long t...