Chris Loper has been writing about self-improvement and helping busy adults with habit formation since 2017. He also writes an education blog for parents and students for Northwest Educational Services. Along with Greg Smith, Chris is the cocreator of Parenting for Academic Success, a series of transformative classes that create empowered parents, confident students, and harmonious families. His most recent endeavor combines his academic and habit-formation expertise to help students thrive in college. Visit SmartCollegeHabits.com to learn more. In 2021, Chris published a humorous memoir titled Wood Floats and Other Brilliant Observations, a book that blends crazy stories with practical life lessons. He lives in Issaquah, WA where he is the owner of South Cove Tutoring.
Here’s a powerful idea I learned from Tal Ben-Shahar’s positive psychology course: “You are the co-creator of your reality.”1 This means that you don’t just experience the world – you also help shape it. You’re not merely an observer. You’re a participant. Some people take the view that you have no free will. You’re an animal, acting on instincts. Or you’re a cog in a machine, serving the powers that… Read More »You Co-Create Your Reality
Too often, we engage in self-improvement as a form of self-punishment. In Radical Acceptance, Tara Brach explains what looks like to pursue self-improvement for all the wrong reasons: “We embark on one self-improvement project after another. We strive to meet the media standards for the perfect body and looks by coloring out the gray, lifting our face, being on a perpetual diet. We push ourselves to get a better position… Read More »Self-Improvement For All the Right Reasons
Like many folks, I thought we were on our way out of this mess, but the recent spike in cases has made it clear the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over. And, like many folks, I rode out the spring in a sort-of holding pattern – not taking on new projects or pushing myself much in the arena of self-improvement. Sure, I’ve kept up with my writing and my full-court… Read More »Self-Improvement In The Time Of COVID
You’ve heard it a million times: Stress is bad for you. It hurts your performance. So you need to reduce stress. But what if that’s all wrong? What if the real story of stress is a lot more interesting than that? And I don’t know about you, but when I hear the advice to “reduce stress,” I tend to roll my eyes. For most of us, that’s just not realistic.… Read More »Strategic Stress Management: Techniques that Really Work