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Book Review: Self-Compassion for Dummies
Though the title feels less than compassionate (who wants to think of themselves as dummies?) the author, Steven Hickman, is keenly aware...
Kate Siegel
Jan 272 min read


Quieting Your Inner Critic - a How-To
When was the last time something came along and fundamentally changed the way you thought about things? Give that question a minute - we...
Kate Siegel
Jun 10, 20243 min read


Meet Your Other Four Saboteurs
In my last post, Meet Five of Your Accomplice Saboteurs , you were introduced to The Avoider, The Controller, and the three Hypers:...
Kate Siegel
May 9, 20243 min read


Meet Five of Your Accomplice Saboteurs
In last week's post, The Judge in Your Head , I talked about the universal Saboteur that afflicts us all, the Judge. The Judge spends...
Kate Siegel
Apr 30, 20243 min read


The Judge in Your Head is Holding You Back
I woke up the other morning and my daughter was sick, which meant she was staying home from school. I work from home and had a four-hour...
Kate Siegel
Apr 19, 20244 min read


Creating Work-Life Balance in HR
It's becoming increasingly more apparent that HR teams are facing challenges that other teams just don't face -- challenges that are more...
Kate Siegel
Oct 19, 20234 min read


If You're Making it Up, Make it Good
Back when I was acting, I learned pretty early on that you never know why you didn't get a role. Maybe your audition sucked or you weren't thin enough. But maybe you were two inches taller than the man who was already cast. Or you were brunette and they wanted a blonde. Or the role was already tentatively filled by last year's intern. Or you looked too much like the director's ex-girlfriend and that would be too awkward. Or you were the director's ex-girlfriend... You
Kate Siegel
Mar 4, 20222 min read


What You Resist Persists
Psychologist Carl Jung is noted for teaching that the pieces of our selves that we can't accept are the very things that stick with us and plague us in different ways until we finally drop the resistance and accept them. What does this mean, and what can we do about it? First, think about the things in your life you can't accept or be with. These are things that drive you crazy (in yourself or others). For example, for a long time, I had trouble with "neediness." When my
Kate Siegel
Dec 16, 20213 min read


Stop Shoulding All Over Yourself
When I’m in the grip of my saboteur, I should all over myself. It’s not pretty. Let me break that down a little. The saboteur is one of the voices in my head that just wants me to stay small and play it safe. It’s got a handful of really attractive techniques it uses to keep me small (fear, shame, comparison, derision, judgment – to name but a few) but shoulding is one of my favorites because it’s so subtle. Sometimes the saboteur feeds me one (or many) of the following l
Kate Siegel
Sep 28, 20214 min read


How Compassionate are you with Yourself?
I was sitting with a friend recently who was going on about how terrible her complexion was and how awful her varicose-veined leg looked and how the skin on her tummy has never been the same since the babies were born. And while I didn't care about pimples I couldn't see and a leg that looked just fine and a tummy that was always hidden behind clothing, I did feel terrible for my friend. She was suffering. And bringing a lot of that suffering on herself. I sat and listene
Kate Siegel
Sep 20, 20213 min read


That ugly voice in your head
Whenever I embark on something new -- working with a new client, a new freelance project, even trying a new schedule with my baby -- I hear a sneaky, unfriendly voice offering me sixteen different ways my new endeavor will fail. I recognize the voice; I've been hearing it for as long as I can remember. But it wasn't until I came to coaching that I understood what that voice is. It's my inner gremlin, my personal saboteur, my stuck-maker. Originally, that voice helped keep
Kate Siegel
Jun 30, 20213 min read


How Not to Borrow Trouble
One thing I've always struggled with is borrowing trouble. Making mountains out of molehills. Playing the end of the act before the curtain even rises. I look for every way something could go wrong, every way I could mess something up, and then obsess about it... until it actually happens. Not because it was inevitable, but because I made it inevitable. I'm a bit of a Girl Scout; I like to be prepared for every possible outcome. In my purse at (almost) all times there a
Kate Siegel
May 14, 20214 min read
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