“Hey Ryan, you know that suffering is optional, right?” I’m safe in saying that I had the most experience on my team with a coach before I joined Accomplishment Coaching last year. I hired my coach while I was in process of writing Written in the Stone. My original coach Michelle said those words I started with at perhaps the lowest point in my life. I was swimming upstream in a current of hell. I was a month removed from losing my dad – my best friend. My well-being was a hot mess. I hadn’t slept well in several months. My hope was fading away. And I was * this…

“Why don’t you go to law school?” my girlfriend’s mom asked. “My parents would like that,” I said. “I want to write movies.” “Why don’t you go to law school and write on the side?” “Mom,” Sam said. “It was a suggestion.” “Mom, how’s your gnocchi?” Sam thought she did me a favor by changing the subject that day. I wouldn’t apologize for my dreams. So what if I wasn’t going to law school? A future, creating fiction made my chest swell with secret swagger. While my peers pedaled through pre-professional career tracks, I focused on a saga so epic it would blow the hinges off Hollywood. Based on a…

Mr. Engber, my high school chemistry teacher, asked me to meet him after school, on the last day of class. His rule was: if you miss 3 homework assignments for the year, you automatically fail. I’d missed 180, as I hadn’t done a single one. “You know,” he said “I can’t pass you. “Robert” I replied, “you know you can’t FAIL me.” “Did…did you just call me Robert?” he asked incredulously. “Bobby. Whatever,” I said. “I know you can’t give me the 95 I deserve. Of 400 students, I’ve got the second highest test average in the grade.” “You didn’t meet the curriculum criteria,” he correctly said. “Bobby,” I asked…

As many of you know, I was a psychotherapist for seven years before changing my practice to one of coaching. Naturally, lots of people ask me what the difference is between COACHING and THERAPY. My landlords, who are Scandinavian, didn’t get the concept of Life Coaching (they’re in their 70s) and wondered if I’m teaching people how to brush their teeth or make their beds. To be clear, I’m not. Here’s a little debrief: I started working with my first coach in 2012, while I was still a therapist. I had considered the idea for a while, but hadn’t actually hired anyone for fear that the investment might be a…

Several years ago, I sat in the back row of the Bernard Jacobs Theatre taking in the Broadway-hit, Frost Nixon. The entire auditorium sat in silence, gripped during the play’s most compelling monologue. Just as the speech ended, I heard an elderly woman in front of me whisper, “Beautiful,” under her breath. I want to make people feel that way, I thought — so moved by a piece of expression they literally can’t keep it to themselves. I followed the blueprint for someone hoping to tell stories for a living. I moved to New York, went to a fancy drama school, and in no time was auditioning for big television,…

— There is a distinct lack of praise and appreciation in our intimate relationships. My female clients frequently tell me things like: “I just want to know that he still finds me attractive.” “Sometimes I can’t even tell if he still wants to be with me.” “A lot of the time during sex he feels really distant. I don’t know if he’s thinking about someone else or just doesn’t want to look at me as much anymore.” Your partner deserves to know how much they affect you. And they want to know that you find them attractive. Here’s how to make a woman feel beautiful and show her how much you love her. 1.…

— My mum doesn’t have a computer or a smartphone. She doesn’t have the Internet.  I offered to buy her an iPhone once, but it sent her into a panic. This means that if I want to share photos of the kids with her I have to print them and mail them. Some live inside the 50-odd frames scattered around her quaint little beachside house, but most surely live in boxes under the bed. But one thing my mum does have is something all of us want – she’s happy. She has peace of mind and hardly a care in the world. When I think about it, she’s been this way for…

Amanda Magee first met her now-husband Sean five years ago while working at the department store Belk in Mooresville, North Carolina. Sean was there buying cologne and the two got to talking. Sparks flew right off the bat. “I had never felt that before,” Amanda told HuffPost. “There was just something about him. I don’t say it to sound mushy and hopelessly romantic, but it was unlike anything I had ever experienced.” Amanda wanted to ask for his number but decided against it. She did, however, hold onto a receipt with Sean’s name on it, hoping their paths might cross again. Huff Post is hitting the road this fall to…

Marjan Apostolovic/Shutterstock Despite what you see in romantic comedies, it takes more than a movie marathon with friends and a big tub of Ben and Jerry’s to truly get over a breakup. And while all breakups are heart-crushing, there’s one type that science has proven to be the most distressing of all. According to a new study from Cornell University, published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, the most hurtful breakup comes from being dumped for someone else—scientifically coined as “comparative rejection.” Apparently, out of the many possible reasons to leave a relationship, being traded for someone else hurts more than partners leaving to “take time for themselves,” because…

Social media dominates life in the twenty-first century. Rich or poor, city-slicker or hillbilly, Left Coast dweller or red-state denizen of the heartland, each of us (or at least anyone who has not tried to remove himself from ‘the grid’) likely owns a smartphone or computer that can access news and information from a vast digital network connecting millions of users who communicate with each other on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat. In a matter of seconds, we can plug into the grid and watch videos, comment on posts, follow trends in the news, or simply track the life and times of friends and family. It…