Did you know that something as simple as ‘a smile from within’ can change your entire day?

Will you join me?

• Breathe in, breathe out
  Close your eyes and take three deep breaths through your nose. Feel your body relaxing.

• Smile softly
  Pull the corners of your mouth up slightly and make ‘soft eyes’, as if you are looking at something sweet, cute.
  Read more: The Smile from Within

Safety, and the power of small choices
Suddenly, I’m reading  how important it is to give children freedom in every magazine or paper I open.
But you know what? Too much freedom can make your child insecure.

I get it though, you want to give your children all the space they need to discover what they want.

But do you realize that you can overwhelm your children by doing so? Your child can feel like he/she is swimming without a life-vest.

A friend was completely down. She thought she wasn’t good enough. Completely self-effacing. Depressed, even. At some point, she sought help. Very cool because she was Dutch, lived abroad, and was far away from ‘familiar help’. It was long before online sessions.

I was able to support her as a friend, but I was too close as a therapist. Luckily, she found a great therapist who taught her brilliant things, mainly about herself. She learned to look differently at things happening around her. What she could and couldn't control.
I was quite curious how this therapist approached the process and asked my friend what kind of assignments she was given to do.
One assignment has stayed with me to this day and I now use it regularly myself. For myself and for my own clients.
It's a bit like keeping a ‘gratitude’ book, in which you daily write down 3 to 5 things that made you happy, what made you grateful, what went well that day, what made you smile.

It's Saturday afternoon. No wind. All (adult) children are at home. It’s time for a walk on the beach.

We walk, whilst talking, laughing and also running on the crowded beach. Looking at the sea, the people and all the dogs.

When we are almost at 'our' beach mark, the one where we always decide to turn back,  we spot a bunch of keys . Practically in the sea. What to do? What should I do?

No one seems to be searching for them as far as we can see. We decide to go to the boulevard and look out for a Mitsubishi, because the keyholder shows this brand. We walk past the first cars, but unfortunately we don’t find the right car. We stroll on, meanwhile decide to buy some fish.

We stroll past the next block of cars and spot a Mitsubishi! A foreign car at that.