An interest in life transitions led me to a book by Katie Byron called "Loving What Is."

In this book, the author takes you through a process that can change the way that you think about yourself and the people around you. The idea is to free yourself from your judgments and look at your life and those around you in a new way.

The way that she describes doing this is looking at your thoughts. After all, they are only thoughts. But it is the thinking that lies behind the thoughts that she is investigating. This reminds me of some of the things I've learned studying Buddhism. It is about the idea that we create our own suffering and we can free ourselves of this by evaluating our thinking and realizing that the constant chatter that's going on in our head can be tamed.

Taming our chattering mind isn't easy because we can be conditioned to scold ourselves for not doing this and not doing that, or doing too much of this and not enough of something else. I know that's true for me.

But, hey, sometimes you just have to calm it all down and just say to yourself, well, I gave it my best shot so that is just fine.

Why don't we do that? Why don't we congratulate ourselves instead of finding something wrong? Why do we remain in suffering and misery blaming and criticizing others in our minds? We perpetuate these thoughts and they just create more sadness.

But, what if we can turn this around? What if we can find a way to work with this when it comes up? What if we can find a way to examine these points of pain and release them so that we can be free of this plague?

Well, that is what this book is examining and it's interesting and I recommend it to you. It could ease up the chattering and bring you into a transition that takes you to a new happier place.

All the best to you --