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Browse published articles attributed to Warren Redman, with full-archive search.
The collection of skills that adds up to Emotional Fitness is not easy to quantify or even define. In the corporate world they are often obliquely called “the soft skills” for that reason. This distinguished them, I suppose, from the “hard skills” that are more ...
Last week I met with Gandhi. He was standing, wearing his familiar white cotton robe, his bare feet on the old cobbled pavement of a market square. People were going about their business, occasionally greeting him politely but otherwise taking little notice of the great man in their presence. I ...
It would be a different world if we each received our birthright of knowing love from our parents. The fact is that not enough children do know that they are loved. As parents, our most important legacy is to offer our children that love. If they know they have it, they can deal with almost ...
Over the past few weeks I have been surrounded by people who have colds, coughs and flu-like symptoms. Fortunately for me, I have not succumbed to the germs and viruses that have been spread around, partly secure in my belief that being emotionally fit is what protects me. I am not immune from ...
Change is, as the saying goes, the only constant. It is also the thing that most of us resist, even when the change appears positive, and certainly when the change seems out of our control. And yet every change, large or small, is another opportunity for growth, for learning and for a new ...
As conscious as we may wish to be in life, the difficult awareness to have is that of the unknown power that lies within us. Whenever we take some action, there is always a consequence. Most of the time, we plan it that way and generally hope that the consequence will be the one that we ...
Being is not only thinking. For us, much of our existence is experienced though our feelings. Odd then, that so much of what we talk about, read about and see going on in the world is dealt with through the realm of thinking and logic. What a huge piece of the human condition we miss when we ...
Do you feel bombarded sometimes by the dozens of amazing, powerful, mind-blowing and – of course – NEW offers that come through your mail-box, TV screen or Inte et every week? Whether it’s a brand of cleaner, a book or movie, political idea or even partner, it is the very “newness” that seems ...
Last week I received in the mail a copy of the latest newsletter from my old school, a place I last attended over fifty years ago. It was filled with reminiscences from past students and obituaries of contemporaries. I was struck with the seemingly mundane existence of some of them, although the ...
It seems odd to me that most people go through life imagining that they know exactly what will happen and get shocked or surprised if things don’t go the way they expect. It is even stranger to me that those same people appear to believe that they are immortal. Today I had a conversation with ...
The story of Creation in the Old Testament tells us that God created heaven and earth and all that’s in it in the space of six days, and rested on the seventh. Whatever you believe, just imagine for a moment that God had used an extra day. For a start, we would have eight day weeks now and ...
We all have some frustrations in life; the things that bring us our pain or our problems, our feelings of pressure or powerlessness. They can drag us down and submerge us. And they will, until we recognize them as the source of our inner strength, our creativity and our potential to make ...
As Spring bursts into being, new things emerge. I always found it hard to understand why January would be the start of a New Year, when April makes so much more sense – in the Northern Hemisphere anyway. Newness in the plant and animal world is all around us and that newness is so often mirrored ...
For many years we have been, quite rightly, acknowledging moms and the balancing act that they have to maintain to do all the things that good moms do. More recently attention has started to focus on the vital role of dads in the healthy and positive upbringing of their children. At last, one ...
It’s a new year and I have an announcement to make. But first, let me wish you all fulfillment, health and serenity in 2007. It has been a delight to hear from you and work with many of you during the past year and I look forward to the road ahead. It has been eleven years (January 1st 1996) ...
I constantly hear people talk about how they would love to let go of their attachments, not so much to things, but to their expectations. “If only I didn’t worry so much about how things will turn out, I’d feel a lot less anxious,” is a common cry. Letting go is easier said than done, ...
In the universal human search for meaning, there are almost as many answers as there are people. This is often organized into our religions, cultures, nations and communities. Victor Frankl, wrote much of his book “Man’s Search for Meaning” while encarcerated in the Nazi concentration camp of ...
Truth, the saying goes, is stranger than fiction, and I am witness to that in my own life and from the thousands of stories that I have heard from people over the last thirty years that I have practiced as a counsellor, a coach and an Emotional Fitness trainer. If you believe that your life is ...
How do we know anybody else? How does anybody else really know who you are? The truth is that we can only ever know what is in our own perception, so that I may see you through my own eyes differently from how someone else might see you. There is another, very important factor in my ...
So much of life seems to be a competition. We need to have more or be better than everyone else, or at least those in our immediate circle, and if we’re not there is that feeling of dissatisfaction and insufficiency. So when we are able to see the wonder of who we are and the completeness and ...
Here’s a question with a lot of mystery to it, because the answer seems so obvious at first. Of course I want to be me; or I am me already, whaddya mean who do I want to be? I have to admit that for years, as a young boy, a teenager, a young and then a middle-aged man I yearned to be like ...
“Emotional Fitness Coaching; what’s that?” That’s a common reaction when I describe what we do at the Centre for Inner Balancing. Another reaction is, “but I don’t think there’s much wrong with me.” Indeed, there’s nothing wrong with any of us, and it’s also true that we could all grow beyond ...
If we did not fully understand the connectedness that we have to each other and to the earth, the effect of the tsunamis on millions of people in eleven countries bordering the Indian Ocean has demonstrated that connectedness. Who has not been touched in some way by this disaster? At a very ...
I wish you all the fulfillment that you desire in this new year of 2006. Before we get into too much of this year, and perhaps even before any resolutions have already been washed away in the tide of duties and responsibilities and all the flotsam of life, I invite you to take a moment and think ...
At times of crisis, such as when a loved one passes away, we are more likely to reflect on the things we haven’t done, the places we haven’t visited, the words we didn’t say, and wish we had done them, gone there, said them. I cannot be certain how or when I learned to follow my deepest desire ...
How much more at ease might we be with ourselves once we discard the need to have more information, knowledge and understanding? Whatever we may know, it can never be more than an infinitesimal fraction of what there is to know. Let us relax into ourselves, knowing how little we really know and ...
One of the joys and privileges of being an Emotional Fitness Coach and teaching Emotional Fitness courses is that I get to hear the inner thoughts and experiences of others. Now don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I want to spy on other people’s lives; it’s that as I hear their stories two things ...
Already a month into 2005 – and what has the year brought so far? A sociologist in Britain has observed that January 24th is “the worst day of the year” – presumably in the Northern hemisphere. The excitement of Christmas and anticipation of the New Year has worn off, credit card bills have ...
We love to have the answers. Today’s society seems focused on problem-solving and coming up with the “best” way to do things. Look in the bookstores. They are filled with self-help books by self-styled gurus who tell us how to live our lives, as though they have the answers for us. And millions ...
The forces of nature have caused immense destruction over the past twelve months. A tsunami devastated huge parts of S.E. Asia; hurricanes and subsequent floods inundated New Orleans, and most recently an earthquake wrecked people’s lives in Pakistan. We may look for meaning in such events or ...
When I first met Tom, more than ten years ago, he was a single man of 32, who sold vending machines for a living. He was successful at this, one of the best salesmen in the company, despite being unable to write because of his dyslexia. But he felt himself to be a failure, and that he had not ...
There is no coincidence. When we see the same thing a few times, or meet the same people, or bump into someone we have just been talking about, we tend to call it a coincidence. It happened to me today. I had just left a message for someone at an organization I am working with and left my ...
The invitations have started arriving, the lights are going up, the stores are playing Christmas music and people appear to be bracing themselves for family reunions. There is an air of unreality about all this: a case of people seeming to try too hard, of going through the motions without ...
Last time I introduced you to the first of my Recipes for Inner Peace from the book of that name. The first Recipe is Listening Power. Now let’s look at the second recipe called Learning from Experience. In the book Jenny is developing a new relationship. She badly wants it to work but is ...
As you read this I will be miles away from home, enjoying a reunion with my daughter and family and friends in England, after which Nicole and I will be flying to Rome and spending twelve days cruising in the Mediterranean. This is not meant to make you envious. The trip is my retirement. After ...
At first glance this statement may appear to be gratuitous. After all, some people appear to have little or no choice in the circumstances in which they find themselves. Sometimes, it’s true, we are subject to events outside our control. I know of one man who became a paraplegic after an ...
This month I am making a special offer, in preparation for the launch of three new projects that will be coming on track over the next few months. The first project is the publication of my next book, title under wraps so far (until I decide what it is!). The theme of the book is recipes for ...
Doesn’t seem much does it? But delve deeper and we will discover that when we experience life to its fullest, we find a treasure trove of immense wealth. When we experience the depth of our emotions, the richness of our senses and the extent of our wisdom, we become aware of the meaning and ...
I‘ve heard a lot recently from dads who have felt displaced inside their own family. This is how a typical conversation has gone: “For years I did what I thought was expected of me. I have been the chief bread winner, and my wife has mainly taken care of the children. I realize now that I ...
My daughter came from England to visit a little while back. It was the first time I'd seen her for nearly four years, and this had felt far, far too long. I had missed the closeness of her. Phone calls and e-mails are fine, but never the same as being there. Lin is 34 and still my little girl ...
Almost all of what I teach is, in one way or another, how we can listen at a deep level to others and ourselves. Part of listening – or Listening Power as I call the process – is to understand what the other person is trying to say. Understanding ourselves is sometimes a tough call; to ...
BE A GREAT DAD – building your legacy is the title of a new CD produced by Warren Redman in conjunction with Families Matter, a Calgary-based not-for-profit organization dedicated to the healthy development and well-being of families. The CD is a series of interviews with dads, kids and moms ...
It still amazes me. No matter how many times I hear it, when someone tells me that nobody ever listened to them before, or that being listened to was the most powerful experience that they had, I feel a surge of emotion. It’s a mixture of sadness and anger tinged with elation and determination. ...
A few months ago I went to a school reunion in England. As events go, maybe this does not rank as amazing. But amazing it was and taught me more about how we develop as adults than reading a ton of books on the subject. Here was a group of fifty or more men and women, most of whom were fairly ...
In the Jan/Feb 2006 article I introduced you to the first of my Recipes for Inner Peace from the book of that name. The first Recipe is Listening Power. Now let’s look at the second recipe called Learning from Experience. In the book Jenny is developing a new relationship. She badly wants it ...
It is well known by now that work-related stress is a major contributor to loss of productivity. What isn’t so well understood is how leaders within the organization can make simple changes to decrease stress and bring quantifiably better bottom-line results. Even where stress doesn’t appear to ...
In 2005 I was involved with a wonderful group of people in the development of a peace conference in Calgary. We called it “The Art of Peace Leadership.” One thing that we all agreed upon was that peace starts right here – within each one of us. Until we have a sense of inner peace, how can we ...