I met Cassidy a few years ago. Her warmth and charisma stayed with me and I knew that we would meet again. I was thrilled to find out that she had trained as a life coach and she accepted my invitation to hone her newly acquired skills for On Balance. She will be our in house life coach for our upcoming membership GUIDED and I hope that you get a feel for all that Cassidy is and what she will bring to the workshops from our interview below.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic I found myself in a lot of conversations about ambiguous loss. My role as a mental health practitioner brought me new challenges in helping people understand and process pain. It was a confusing time. We were all facing the same foe, but each individual’s journey and challenges were unique. Now that we are coming upon a year of isolation, loneliness, inner conflict and anxiety, I feel it is a good time to revisit the topic, and remember some of the lessons and learnings that have gotten us much farther than we all thought ourselves capable, in spite of a year of ambiguous loss.

This month we have been researching and reading about loneliness. Given everything that we are collectively going through, we know that many are struggling with their feelings of loneliness. We hope this article demonstrates that loneliness is nothing to be ashamed of and that it encourages you to open up and reach out if you’re struggling. Many times when we feel lonely it is just a sympathetic ear that we need, we are not always looking for solutions. You can ask for what you need, we can be there for one another.

It has been a hard year. To get through it, most of us baked compulsively, spent long hours on electronics, and went weeks without putting on proper shoes, much less pants without elastic waist bands. With the dawn of 2021, many are taking steps to improve their physical and mental health in hopes of feeling better. For some, this might look like lofty goals, but for most of us, the changes that are slow and small are the most gratifying and sustainable. The benefits of a daily practice are innumerable and tend to stretch beyond our original purpose of embarking on the journey.

For us, having a daily practice means having an intention or action that you consciously practice or consciously aim to practice daily. It is not a strict regime aiming at perfection and enlightenment, it is simply something that you intentionally choose to do for yourself daily.

The uncertainty of 2020 has, in some ways, been a great leveller. For the millions of people all over the planet living in poverty, war and other forms of unjust suffering, uncertainty is the soundtrack to their lives. If we consider anxiety towards uncertainty from that viewpoint, it becomes hard to ignore the privilege of uncertainty anxiety. Having the time to ruminate, obsess and conclude is privilege.

Self-discovery is a selfless act and the 5 essential elements to the self-discovery journey