Pre-Marital Program with Dr. Todd Sojonky

Happy to invite you or someone you know to our pre-marital training program.   Through eight one hour sessions you will learn the keys to having and maintaining a wonderful marriage.   

Statistically couples who complete a pre-marriage training program have a significantly higher success rate of long and happy marriages.   Contact Dr. Sojonky to start you program now!

Self Worth

Just a reminder that a flower can go on never being noticed, acknowledged or appreciated.  Yet it still maintains it's beauty, fragrance, and purpose.

Remember that acceptance and approval from others is not a necessity for happiness and self worth.

Difficulties

Imagine that you are having difficulties with a loved one, such as your mother or father, husband or wife, lover or friend. How helpful and revealing it can be to consider the other person not in his or her “role” of mother or father or husband, but simply as another “you,” another human being, with the same feelings as you, the same desire for happiness, the same fear of suffering. Thinking of the other one as a real person, exactly the same as you, will open your heart to him or her and give you more insight into how to help.

Thich Nhat Hanh's 4 Mantras - Super Soul Sunday - Oprah Winfrey Network

The Importance of Play

Play energizes us and enlivens us. It eases our burdens. It renews our naturalsense of optimism and opens us up to new possibilities.- Stuart Brown

We don’t stop playing because we grow old;we grow old because we stop playing -George Bernard Shaw

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct -Carl Jung.

Play is the highest form of research. -Albert Einstein

We forget that the imagination at play is at the heart of all good work. -Julia Cameron

Considering others...

Considering others to be just the same as yourself helps you to open up your relationships and give them a new and richer meaning. Imagine If societies and nations began to view one another in the same way; at last we would have the beginnings of a solid basis for peace on earth, and the happy coexistence of all peoples.  -Rigpa

Relationships

Imagine that you are having difficulties with a loved one, such as your mother or father, husband or wife, lover or friend. How helpful and revealing it can be to consider the other person not in his or her “role” of mother or father or husband, but simply as another “you,” another human being, with the same feelings as you, the same desire for happiness, the same fear of suffering. Thinking of the other one as a real person, exactly the same as you, will open your heart to him or her and give you more insight into how to help.  ---Rigpa

Thich Nhat Hanh's 4 Mantras - Super Soul Sunday - Oprah Winfrey Network

Consider Others

Considering others to be just the same as yourself helps you to open up your relationships and give them a new and richer meaning. Imagine If societies and nations began to view one another in the same way; at last we would have the beginnings of a solid basis for peace on earth, and the happy coexistence of all peoples. -Rigpa Quote of the Day

Relationships

Imagine that you are having difficulties with a loved one, such as your mother or father, husband or wife, lover or friend. How helpful and revealing it can be to consider the other person not in his or her “role” of mother or father or husband, but simply as another “you,” another human being, with the same feelings as you, the same desire for happiness, the same fear of suffering. Thinking of the other one as a real person, exactly the same as you, will open your heart to him or her and give you more insight into how to help. -Rigpa Quote of the Day

How we think of others...

One powerful way to evoke compassion is to think of others as exactly the same as you. “After all,” the Dalai Lama explains, “all human beings are the same—made of human flesh, bones, and blood. We all want happiness and want to avoid suffering. Further, we have an equal right to be happy. In other words, it is important to realize our sameness as human beings.”   Ripga Quote of the Day.

Relationships

“Whatever relationships you have attracted in your life at this moment, are precisely the ones you need in your life at this moment. There is a hidden meaning behind all events, and this hidden meaning is serving your own evolution.”                            --- Deepak Chopra

The Gestalt Prayer

In marriage and family therapy we discover that we have false expectations of each other.  We expect other people to act as we would.  This is a lie.  We are different and we do not see the world the same way.  Although we need to work together we must also understand that our differences are our strengths.  TJS


I do my thing and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful.
If not, it can’t be helped.
(Fritz Perls, 1969)

Marriage

"Almost no one is foolish enough to imagine that he automatically deserves great success in any field of activity; yet almost everyone believes that he automatically deserves success in marriage."

-Sydney J. Harris

 
Most of the clients I see expect their marriages to work instead of expecting to build their marriages.  Marriage is a contract for a lifetime of hard work!  You may start with love, lust and passion but what keeps relationships going is adaptability, communication and hard work.  Talk, plan, laugh, play and most importantly listen.  Don't hesitate to call a good marriage and family counsellor to develop a program of personal marriage growth.  TJS

Our Actions

If we are interdependent with everything and everyone, even our smallest, least significant thought, word, and action have real consequences throughout the universe.


Throw a pebble into a pond. It sends a shiver across the surface of the water. Ripples merge into one another and create new ones. Everything is inextricably interrelated: We come to realize that we are responsible for everything we do, say, or think, responsible in fact for ourselves, everyone and everything else, and the entire universe.

Love and Will

In 1969 Rollo May believed he was living in an age of instant sex where lasting love had vanished. May's book is an argument to put love and sex back together. Has anything changed? Our schools and campuses are bombarded with images of false sexuality and alcohol. Do we care enough to listen to our lives and discover the values that are guiding us? TJS

"In a world where numbers inexorably take over as our means of identification, like flowing lava threatening to suffocate and fossilize all breathing life in its path; in a world where 'normality' is defined as keeping your cool; where sex is so available that the only way to preserve any inner center is to have intercourse without committing yourself--in such a schizoid world, which young people experience more directly since they have not had time to build up the defenses which dull the senses of their elders, it is not surprising that will and love have become increasingly problematic and even, as some people believe, impossible of achievement." (Love and Will, 1969, p. 32)

Attachment

Often it is only when people suddenly feel they are losing their partner that they realize how much they love them. Then they cling on even tighter. But the more they grasp, the more the other person escapes them, and the more fragile the relationship becomes.

So often we want happiness, but the very way we pursue it is so clumsy and unskillful that it brings only more sorrow. Usually we assume we must grasp in order to have that something that will ensure our happiness. We ask ourselves: “How can we possibly enjoy anything if we cannot own it?” How often attachment is mistaken for love!

Even when the relationship is a good one, love can be spoiled by attachment with its insecurity, possessiveness, and pride; and then when love is gone, all you have left to show for it are the “souvenirs” of love, the scars of attachment.

-Rigpa

Consider Others

Considering others to be just the same as yourself helps you to open up your relationships and give them a new and richer meaning. Imagine If societies and nations began to view one another in the same way; at last we would have the beginnings of a solid basis for peace on earth, and the happy coexistence of all peoples.

Might Makes Right???

I have a deep belief that all relationships should be guided by this principle. If politicians would adopt it the world would be a better place.

"He who imposes himself has the small, manifest might; he who does not impose himself has the great, secret might." ---Martin Buber

So you have lost someone...

The holiday season and the beginning of a new year are often difficult times for many people. We have all lost someone somehow. Death, suicide, divorce or a breakup remind us of what can happen in life. They are reminders to show love and appreciation, or ask for forgiveness. They are opportunities to be more sensitive to your loved ones and to live each day to the fullest.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross said: ‘What I try to teach people is to live in such a way that you say those things while the other person can still hear it.” And Raymond Moody, after his life’s work in near-death research, wrote: “I have begun to realize how near to death we all are in our daily lives. More than ever now I am very careful to let each person I love know how I feel” (taken from Rigpa Quote of the Day).