Dr. Ron Kaiser

Oftentimes, the hardest thing about a task is the process of getting yourself started.  Many great potential achievements and opportunities have been left on the drawing boards and in the minds of people who didn’t have the drive to get started.  They may have been too self-critical or perfectionistic or passive, or they may have lacked the confidence to share their ideas with the world.  It’s impossible to know how many great ideas never saw the light of day, but we can be certain that there are plenty of them. Make no mistake about it.  Getting started doesn’t ensure that... Continue Reading

I consider myself to be a pretty motivated and productive guy.  Although I’m in control of much of my schedule, a typical day consists of work, physical activity such as walking and exercising, and spending quality time with my wife and often with family, neighbors, and other friends.  I know that I’m not too unique in that regard, but I don’t think that I would be as efficient or effective if I didn’t have routines for easing into the day and easing into the night. I think that a morning and evening routine is pretty important to enable your body and mind to wake up in the... Continue Reading

At this time of the year, when we just celebrated Mother’s Day and prepare to celebrate Father’s Day next month, it always brings to my mind a question that I remember from my youth. It was pretty universal in my generation to ask the following question – particularly after seeing  parents receiving gifts and being honored on their special days: “If there’s a Mother’s Day and a Father’s Day, why isn’t there a Children’s Day?”  I don’t know where parents learned it, but every parent seemed to know the same answer, “Every day is Children’s Day.”  I never... Continue Reading

We all have bad days – and some of them are of our own making.  Of course, sometimes things don’t work out because we are treated unfairly, and sometimes we are treated fairly but we don’t get the job or the relationship or the discount or the tax break that we want.  Even on the worst of days, however, we have a special gift available to us.  That gift is called TOMORROW. Whatever today has been like, we have the chance to start over again tomorrow.  We can learn from today and plan differently, choose differently, and prepare ourselves differently so that we can hopefully... Continue Reading

Some very compassionate people have a difficult time expressing self-compassion.  According to Dr. Kristin Neff, self-compassion expert at the University of Texas, the practice of self-compassion involves giving ourselves the same kindness and care that we’d give to a friend. Why do some people find that concept so difficult?  In some cases, the problem is rooted in a history of criticism by significant others or by expectations that family members or employers have placed that are impossible to meet.  In other cases, people have treated failures as reasons for self-criticism rather... Continue Reading

A person’s comfort zone is a psychological state of mind in which a person is operating in familiar territory and feels in control and relatively free of anxiety and stress.  It is a psychological space marked by performing routine behaviors that carry little risk.  As the name implies, it is comfortable to be in your comfort zone.  Conversely, it is stressful to function out of your comfort zone.  If you’ve taken a physical or psychological or financial risk, you’ve likely left your comfort zone to do so – whether it was rock climbing or proposing marriage or quitting a... Continue Reading

There are a number of wonderful medications that provide benefits to a targeted physiologic process or area of your body.  Some even do more than one helpful thing.  But there is no drug that does so much for you as exercise and other physical activity.  A regular program of exercise obviously helps with muscle tone, weight control, bone health, and overall fitness.  It is not widely recognized, however, that exercise can significantly contribute to brain health as it increases blood flow and oxygen to the brain.  In fact, recent research demonstrates the role that exercise plays... Continue Reading

On many occasions, I’ve discussed the importance of social connectedness.  Being socially connected provides you with more opportunities to have fun and to have a support system.  Furthermore, during the aging process, there is a strong association between loneliness and poor health and a shorter lifespan. Something that can get lost in the process when discussing the importance of social relationships is the fact that having alone time is also important for good mental health. Spending time alone can permit you the opportunity to de-stress and reduce the pressure that many of us... Continue Reading

No matter how positively we approach life and how satisfied we are with our situations, nothing ever turns out right all the time. We all wind up being disappointed at times, feeling regretful at times, and feeling that we are being treated unfairly at times. During those times, it is pretty normal to try to figure out what caused the particular circumstance to happen, to try to resolve the situation more favorably if possible, and work to learn from it so that you can hopefully be in a better situation in the future. It is clearly unhelpful, however, to ruminate, become self-critical,... Continue Reading

Many years ago, when I was in school, we would occasionally get a test where you lost more points if you got the wrong answer than if you left the item blank. In essence, there was a penalty for guessing. I could never understand why. Perhaps my thinking in that regard may have been one of my first steps on the way to a career in psychology. Or maybe, I had been traumatized by losing extra points for an answer that I had consciously figured out and made sense to me, but it was wrong (I don’t know that to be the case because I don’t remember such an occurrence – but that may be... Continue Reading