Personal Growth Archives • Six Seconds

The Neuroscience of Change: How to Make New Year’s Resolutions Stick

Why do New Year’s resolutions nearly always fail? And what can we do to make them stick? Explore the neuroscience of change and motivation.

6 Tips for Making the Best of Your Reality

Our current reality is challenging. What do we do when we can’t change it? Here’s how we can make it the best reality possible with these six practical tips you can do today.

Feeling Overwhelmed? Harness Your True North

We only have so much energy and attention to give. This article will help you align your focus and attention with your “True North”– your purpose.

Illuminate: 3 Steps to Acting on Your Values

We all make hundreds of decisions a day; do they align with your values? This week’s Illuminate gives you three practical steps for identifying your values, putting them into practice, and making your life more aligned with your values.

Illuminate: Navigating Anger toward Wisdom

Dive into a beautiful (and true!) story about the power of navigating emotions– and learn how you can transform anger/sadness/grief/confusion into wisdom about yourself and your life’s path.

Illuminate: What DO You Do with Your Inner Critic?

We all have that little voice inside: ‘You didn’t do that right/ fast enough/ well enough.’ How do you treat yours… and could you treat it more kindly?

Talk to Yourself Like You Would Your Best Friend

Recent research suggests that speaking kindly to yourself helps you cope with challenging situations. But how exactly do you change self-talk?

Start Your Day on PURPOSE: Choose A Morning Ritual

Recent research suggests those with a morning ritual feel that their life is more meaningful. Set your daily intention by building a morning ritual… here’s how.

Illuminate: Want Empathy? 3 Phrases To Ask for It

We all need a good listening ear sometimes. But how do we get it when it isn’t offered? Here are three phrases to communicate the need for empathy with others. Try them out!

Illuminate: Perfectionism, Pt 1

Perfectionism is the excessive fear of making mistakes. This week, I invite you to pay attention to how perfectionism, or the fear of making mistakes, shows up in your life.

What Is The Root Belief of Your Perfectionism?

No one loves making mistakes, but some of us are more afraid of making a mistake than others. If you are one of these people, take a mindful moment to better understand where your fear comes from.

Illuminate: Where Do You Want to Go?

Take a moment to clarify your (emotional, professional, physical) destination + represent it in a fun way.

What Relationship Pattern Holds You Back?

Everyone has their own pattern when it comes to relationships. ‘Attachment Styles’ have been studied in psychology for years, and its wisdom is now starting to find its way into everyday relationships. What’s your attachment style, and how can you best work with it?

Cultivate Growth Mindset with Unlikely Gratitude

Unlikely Gratitude: Finding the opportunity for growth in an otherwise, mundane, annoying, or horrible situation.

Illuminate: What’s Behind Your Mask?

How often do we wear masks? Do we actually spend most (or all) of our lives wearing a protective costume so that we can hide who we really are? Learn about your unique masks in this simple + meaningful activity.

Want a Good Long Life? 1 Clear Answer from Research

“It’s useful to know it’s a choice worth making.” The results from an 80-year-long research study clearly identify what we should focus on for a long and fulfilled life.

Your Limiting Belief Demystified

It’s prickly, but it’s worth it. Learn more about your own limiting belief + tools for working through it, all thanks to the person who most annoys you. Take this moment to learn compassion- for yourself and for them.

EQ Research on Growing Our Capacity to Grow

What does it mean to “grow” as a person, and what’s the role of EQ? New research findings on global emotional intelligence show us what’s supporting and inhibiting growth.

Illuminate: Crafting Your Noble Goal

Three steps to tapping into your guiding purpose. Today’s the day to create or refine your understanding of what fuels you + fuels the world.

Illuminate: What’s Your Brain’s Extreme Habit?

A guide to tempering it for better decision making. Dive into your own brain’s extreme preferences + explore some tools for teaching your brain that there is indeed a different way to look at things.

Back to School with Hope and Maybe Something More?

Heading back to school, mixed with hope & fear. How can we help students (anyone) feel belonging and acceptance as they are — while also supporting them to keep growing?

Three Steps to Identifying Your Goals + Obstacles

The only person who has the responsibility to prioritize you IS you. Take a mindful moment to build self-awareness, set your goals, and Choose Yourself.

Practice of Practice: Free Mini-Course

How do you get better and reach your goals? Practice! But what’s the best way? Here’s a free minicourse where you’ll find out, in just 5 emails

Practicing Music: Creating Food for the Soul

Do you embrace “practice” in your life? Meet professional musician who’s gives away her practice time to enhance others.

Rewritten: How do we break a bad habit (and make good ones)?

How do we rewrite habits? Do you want to pen new, healthy ones or erase worn, harmful ones?

Increase Wellbeing Practicing Self-Compassion

Be compassionate… not just to others, but starting with yourself.

The Enthusiasm of the Desperate

20 Outstanding Books on Emotional Intelligence

Here’s a wonderful collection of books about emotional intelligence, including six key concepts for every parent to share with children (and books to do so!)

What’s Your Body Telling You?

Listening to What Our Bodies Are Telling Us – By Beth Offenbacker, PhD Have you ever been unsure how you feel about something? As I’ve gotten older, I find sometimes I live more “in my head” than sometimes I want to. And as someone with a brain preference for Rational data (see the Brain […]

Stepping Out of the Shadow of Perfect

How can we counter the shadow of perfectionism? Increasing self-compassion and empathy will free us to be our best.

Not just SMART goals, setting CLEAR goals for success

Have you been making lists each day but not making progress? Most goals are missing and essential component: emotional intelligence. Power up your goal setting with EQ. By adding the CLEAR method for setting goals to your SMART goals routine, you’ll boost your effectiveness. With CLEAR methodology you can use emotional intelligence in goal setting […]

EQ Stories: Coaching a Career Change

EQ Stories are profiles of people whose lives have been helped by emotional intelligence and Six Seconds’ coaching model. This story is from Six Seconds’ Marilynn Jorgensen, Master Coach/ICF Trainer. Why is emotional intelligence coaching so powerful? “Bill” is a senior leader who needed EQ: ” I was moving up in my career and yet […]

Physiology of Emotion, Exercise, and Change

I was recently talking to a group about the fact that we can choose how we feel. “But didn’t you say emotions are an automatic biological response?” Yes, in fact, I did… but don’t we have choice about our biology? I remember years ago interviewing neurobiologist Debra Niehoff about the way some people seemed […]

Right Speech by Eknath Easwaran

Karen McCown, Six Seconds’ Founder, handed this article to me several years ago. It’s stuck with me as a powerful set of guidelines for being impeccable with words. The children, Patty and I have discussed the “three gatekeepers” often over the last years; we started when the kids were 4 and 6 years old and […]

The Princess with the Glass Heart

by Anabel Jensen, Ph.D. When I was very small — probably about seven — I read a fairy tale about a princess who was born with a glass heart. In the story, this princess grew into a lovely young woman. Early one day, feeling joy at the sight of the first crocuses or daffodils or […]

Fight or Flow Part Two: “Water Is Stronger”

This second half of “Fight or Flow” explores the alternative to the kinds of “hitting back first” reactions discussed in part one. To constructively engage with emotions requires reframing the way we think — and feel — about feelings. It’s always amazed me that these heavy stones can move — float — on a cushion […]

Tag: Personal Growth