Resilience Archives

mental health fatigue despair struggle grind

Are You Getting Ground Out by The Grind?

The grind is real. Life for many can be just one continual experience of being ground out by the daily grind. Every now and then, someone sends me an email. I read them all, and always my heart is touched. I send some prayers and ask God to help me write […]

Getting Well Staying Well

52 Days to Better Mental Health

The change was barely noticeable unless you knew them well enough to know that this was significant. It was a small change in their behaviour, a problem that had plagued them for most of their life, but now it was gone. They wanted a miracle, like the over night delivery of […]

Uncategorized

In Recovery YOU Have To Do The Work

2 comments

The old saying is true. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. It’s also true that you can take the water to the horse, put the water in a china cup and sprinkle rose petals over and it still won’t drink. In my years as a […]

Anxiety & Stress

What to Do With Shame Slingers

I love watching those ‘Mission Impossible’ shows. The script takes you to places where you wonder how this ‘Mission Impossible’ will be resolved because if it isn’t, then the whole city is going to be destroyed in a nuclear explosion. I have met people who live in the shadow of […]

Faith & Mental Health

Becoming Fire-Proof: Protecting Ourselves from Burnout

After years of teaching high school in downtown Los Angeles, my wife accepted a job four hours away. On top of my daily stressors of dealing with students and colleagues and deadlines at the school, I now moved to a tiny studio apartment, commuted to see my wife on weekends, and […]

Helping Others Mental health

How to Help Others Solve Problems in 8 Steps

2 comments

Problems! We all have them, and they can so often create incredible amounts of pressure and stress. A small problem for one person can seem like a mountain of stress for another. The problem can feel too big, and that there is no way of solving it. People also come to you with […]

Spiritual Practices

Unfurling of Hope

Sometimes God just jumps out on your daily path of busyness and whispers ‘Look at me’. It happened like this for me the other day. I was working on a farm trying to solve some water reticulation problems. As I was walking to the water pump I happened to […]

Spiritual Formation

How To Create A ‘Pool Room’

‘This is going straight into the pool room’. We all need a place to put our encouragements. Where is yours? Classic Australian comedy and especially loved by us Kiwis watching our ‘across the ditch’ neighbours making fun of themselves. All of Dad’s most prized possessions are in the Pool Room. […]

Anxiety & Stress

How to Develop a Compass for the Brain

6 comments

When the stress loading becomes too much it is very easy to lose your way. What we need is some sort of Thinking Compass. Mental Illness is one of the worst fog generating experiences you can have. Your brain can play tricks on you. Your perceptions can change, sometimes quite […]

Spiritual Formation

4 Joys to Grasp when your ‘Hands are Tied’

It can be frustrating when your ‘hands are tied’. ‘My hands are tied’ is an idiom that means that you are unable to act or behave in a certain way because something is constraining you. There is no freedom. ‘I would love to raise your salary but my hands are […]