5 Keys to Having an Amazing Inner Life

Have you ever noticed how many books in the self-help sections of book stores and how many articles in magazines start with a number.   Who knows really how many keys there are to having an amazing inner life?  There are probably at least a billion and that would just be a start.    I am going …

The Challenge of Being an Introvert in an Extroverted Culture

When I grew up in America in the 1950s-60s, it was pretty obvious to me when I entered school that the really strong part of me that was introverted was not valued or encouraged in any way.   Really I remember being really comfortable with myself before entering school and then suddenly being overwhelmed with needing …

The Problem with the Way Most of Us Set Goals and Go for Visions

I have been doing a lot of work recently in my counseling sessions with various people who are having difficulty achieving what they really want to do in their lives.   One of the things that I have discovered is very revealing about the process.   Most of what I have read in the past about goal …

Using Your Dreams to Monitor the Intensity of Your Physical Activity

In the previous post about what kind of physical activity you can do when dealing with trauma I introduced the concepts of low intensity and high intensity exercise emphasizing the importance of low intensity work when you are in first working with your trauma.   In this post I am going to show how to use …

The Hows and Whys of a Daily Spiritual Practice

“Let each morn be better than its eve and each morrow richer than its yesterday.”  Baha’u’llah The modern world is fully of busy people doing a lot of things all the time, but one of the things that few people have is a daily spiritual practice where they are consciously working on the purpose of …

Fear is Your Best Friend When It Comes to Transformation

In the work I do with DreamsforPeace hardly a day passes when I don’t receive a message that goes something like this.  “Dear Richard, Last night I had the most disturbing nightmare…”    The first impulse when we have intense feelings of fear whether they are in dreams or real life is to do whatever is …

The Challenge of Being Strong in Your Self

For a lot of people who have worked in various organizations and businesses the big challenge is the realization that the CEO or head is often stuck developmentally around the age of 5.   If you think about letting a 5 year old be in charge of an organization,  they run into a number of big …

The Fallacy of Going for Love and Affection: Why We Should Go for Playfulness

Many of the people I get dreams from or work with in counseling sessions suffer from a kind of internal obsession, which I have had myself at times in my life, that believes that if we only have love and affection from someone, then our lives would really work and we would somehow my whole.     …

Releasing Enthusiasm Part 2: Getting Over the Fear of Other People’s Anger

I have a lot of natural calmness.  I think it was just one of those gifts that was placed in me when at the moment of my conception.   I don’t think it has a lot to do with genetics or environment.   It is what helps me do a lot of the inner dream work with …

Being Enthusiastic in a Know-It-All World

Enthusiasm is the capacity to feel up about going for a positive end in the future.    It is the energy that keeps you going despite setbacks and challenges.    It is difficult to imagine any enterprise succeeding without a great deal of enthusiasm. One of the great thieves of enthusiasm is know-it-all energy.  Know-it-all energy is …

Dealing with Nightmares in the Real or Dream World

What should your attitude be after you have had an intense nightmare or have gone through a horrific experience in real life? When most people begin working with what is happening with themselves,  the first goal they have is to get rid of the recurrence of the negative feelings.   When you are feeling a great …

Dealing with Embarrassment: A Real Story

Dear Richard, When I was a little girl, I imagined when I got older the things that stopped me from feeling peaceful and happy would be gone because I would be an adult and be able to choose things for myself. Then I would choose to do things I really wanted to do but wasn’t …

The Dynamics of Going After Big Change

We all want big change.  There is probably nothing more universal and completely compelling within us than to want to change ourselves.  Growth is part of who we are as human beings.   What are the dynamics?  How do we simplify the process so that is more available everyday to everyone?  What a world that would …

Recurring Dreams: Transforming your Recurring Issue Changes Everything in Your Life

When you have a recurring dream, a dream that repeats itself over time, its purpose is to bring up a recurring issue in your life that you need to address.     Even if you do not have recurring dreams,  if you track your dreams regularly, you will find that you are dealing with pretty much the …

When You Deal With Criticism, Listen to the Voices in Your Head

Have you ever noticed that when you watch a very frightening movie, all you have to do is turn off the volume and then the fear goes away.  The movie makers seem to control your state of fear through the way they manipulate sound more than anything else.   Sometimes the scary movies seem a little …

The Virtue of Courage

In the last few weeks I have spend a lot of time with children teaching them about courage using the medium of rock climbing as the tool for its development.   Even though I have done this for 10 years now, it never ceases to amaze me how fast a child can go from being in …

Framework for Change Part 2: Getting Unstuck

We all have issues.  We all have difficulties and problems that we have to face each day.  It is built into the very core of being human that we are all facing challenges.   No one escapes from the moment we are born until we die and then probably beyond that.    When I first started doing …

Framework for Change Part 1: Who first. What or How much second.

There are basically two ways to go about the transformation process.     The first method answers a what or how much question.  What kind of house do I want to live?  What kind of career do I want?   How much money do I want to make?  How many pounds do I want to lose?  How fast …

Focus on the Positive Energy You are Moving to, Not the Negative Thing You are Trying to Get Rid of

“Let each morn be better than its eve and each morrow richer than its yesterday.”  Baha’u’llah For many years I have been inspired by the above the quote because, in the simplest of terms, it explains the whole purpose of our life on the planet.    We are hard wired to go after positive change in …

Embracing Fear

Most of the dreams that people send me have a lot to do with fear.   When you get to the core of someone’s inner work, there is always a fear that that has to be faced.    It is part of the human condition.   I think that for most of us we just want the fear …

Seeing the Positive, Ignoring the Negative, Except with Abuse

The following dream is also on the free dream interpretation page of the blog.   I am sharing it to show the principle of being really positive. Last night, I had a dream about a girl I really like at the moment. She was covered in icing-like makeup, blue and silver, as well as things similar …

Relationships are Tricky Things in Dreams: Be Careful

It seems to me, without actually having done the calculation, that most of our dream life (about 95%) deals with troubles with our relational lives.    I am sure that that is because 95% of our troubles in life are relational ones. How to have a successful relationship seems to be one of the great mysteries …

Inherited, Acquired, and Innate Qualities

One of the big questions people have, when they are embarking on a new change process, is how to find where the problems originated and then how to let go of them so that the new energy can function fully.   The first question I ask others or myself is what the biggest issue is that …

Lions and Boundaries in Dreams

I recently had these two dreams sent to me and thought about how important they are for so many people. I had a very vivid dream.  I had no option but to pass through a path to get to the other side. There was a caged lioness and lion cant remember but the lioness I …

Bear Dreams: Getting to Your Empowerment

I dreamed I was in a house which was being invaded by bears the size of Sasquatch. Someone told me to not worry they know what they are doing, and they had some sort of trick to get them out, but it seemed to me the bears were going to attack. I felt so small. …

Finally Getting Out of Blame and Into Responsibility

The big difficulty with getting out of blame and taking responsibility for moving your life forward is that there are a lot of people out there that are truly worthy of an immense amount of blame.   When you have been a victim of injustice, the condition that most of the world lives in,  then it …

Dreamwork in the Body

Every year when I go to Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada, my son-in-laws and I do some kind of boys day out where we hike or mountain bike.   This year we climbed the Chief in Squamish which is just north of Vancouver.  Shane runs a company called Dare to Evolve  He asked me if I …

Dream Work 8: What You Are in a Dream is NOT the Same as What You Are in the World

Hi… last night I had an odd dream. I am a male, but in this dream I had big breasts and a vagina. I was naked and i started to play with my self and it felt really good… what could this mean? I’m certain I’m not gay, or in any way curious. So what …

Dream Work 7: Living Life As If It Were Already the Future Your True Self Wants

“Let each morn be better than its eve and each morrow richer than its yesterday.” Baha’u’llah The question of inner work is always singular.  How do I get out of the stuck state that I am currently in?  There is large body of literature and work about the importance of being present in yourself,  but …

Dream Work 6: Using Self-Discipline in Dream Analysis

Many times I receive dreams from people that appear as though they could happen in real life just as they happen in the dream world.    For instance, what do you do if your happily married, but you are having sex with someone else than your spouse in a dream?   How do you get your head …