In-Home Clinical Services
Are you looking for ways to improve motivation, accountability, confidence, and wellness for a loved one in need? One effective solution is in-home therapeutic coaching and clinical case management. As humans, we are creatures of habit, and understanding where we...
What is Therapeutic Coaching?
The value of ARN is in our individualized and flexible approach to building and maintaining health, wellness, and independence. At Active Recovery Network we offer individualized therapeutic coaching and case management support for individuals and families. So, what...
Going Within and Daily Habits
“Adversity doesn’t build character, it reveals it.” Let’s use this time to build ourselves up. Strange times we are living through. Tough for many. What’s it revealing for you? How have things been unfolding in the last week? For many of us, since we can’t go OUT,...
The “Midwest Curse” and A Practical Understanding of Time
Telling people I grew up in Kansas is rarely a conversation starter. Tornadoes and The Wizard of Oz is usually as far as the conversation goes. It was a wonderful place to be raised and I definitely have inherited the Midwestern, blue-collar, bucking hay bales and up...
The Most Important Question You Can Ask
The most important question we can ask has been attributed to Albert Einstein, whether accurately or falsely. Regardless of who said it this question carries immense weight and possibility if contemplated. This question is, "Is the universe a friendly place?" Seems...
On the Importance of Adventure & Play
If you’ve seen Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, then you'll remember the cabin fever experienced by Jack Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson. This lead to his abandoning the writing of his play in favor of, or more accurately transfixed by, typing this sentence over and...
Clinicians as Coaches. Our Key Differentiator.
I've been doing the same work for the last 15 years. In 2004 I started doing in-home clinical case management and coaching for young adults who were either leaving treatment through “graduating” or getting kicked out. This was in Boulder, Colorado. All the staff were...
Why Kindness Matters Most
So, I was pretty mean to somebody recently. She didn't deserve it at all, and it crushed me. It may sound dramatic, but it felt like a small death to me. It was unwarranted and unlike me, for the most part. In talking to her a bit about it, and in apologizing, it was...
The 3 Things We Should Always Be Doing
Do you remember that part in the movie Glennary Glen Ross with a young, brash Alec Baldwin where he is grilling the sales team? The “coffee is for closers”, “ABC. Always. Be. Closing!” scene? Well, I had a mom the other day who had just sent her son to a wilderness...
The Gentle Art of Blessing
by Pierre Pradervand On awakening, bless this day, for it is already full of unseen good which your blessings will call forth; for to bless is to acknowledge the unlimited good that is embedded in the very texture of the universe and awaiting each and all....
N.A.A.P. Time for Adults – Understanding the Utility of Mindfulness Practice
When I taught mindfulness at retreat centers, treatment facilities, the cancer center or 1:1 with coaching clients I have found that there is a lot of confusion around what mindfulness practice is and what it is not. Everyone is teaching mindfulness, but the...
The Keys to Success: Resilience, Optimism, Meaning & Purpose
The difference between those who “succeed” in life and those who do not very often lies in the level of optimism and resilience they have developed. The earlier people are able to do this the more likely they are to live meaningful, principled and fulfilling lives....
On Realizing I Was a Helicopter Parent, Too!!
Ok, soooo.. I got called out when I posted some pictures of my daughter learning to ride a bicycle. My sister commented, “Nice photo bombs, helicopter dad!” Well, she’s only 6 I thought, and…., and…. Then she’ll be 12, then 18, then 26 and someday she’ll be 30, and I...
The Importance of Dreaming Big and Believing in Others
One of the most important things we can do for others is to keep dreaming big ourselves. This may sound odd or somewhat contradictory but let me explain. An extraordinary human strength that we have all observed directly in our own lives is the capacity to endure. On...
Mindfulness is NOT a Self-Improvement Project
It took me 10 years of Buddhist practice and study to learn this lesson. It took me pursuing a Master’s Degree in Comparative Religious Studies at Naropa University, several month long meditation retreats in the Tibetan tradition at the Shambhala Mountain Center, a...
How to Win Your 2019 With Ease
Anyone who knows me well knows that I love goals! I love setting goals, I love envisioning the future, dreaming big and trying to catch up with what's possible. My clients and staff know that I come prepared with worksheets, with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, with...
Allowing Heaven
I was going to write something beautiful and elaborate about how we can trap ourselves and create a self-limiting reality that becomes our norm or we can get out of our own way and allow ourselves to experience heaven on earth. But ironically, or not so, I kept...
The Lost Art of Boredom
The best thing my mom ever did was ground me from church. Wait, that's not true. The best thing my mom ever did was adopt me and my sister and show us unconditional love and positive regard. The second best thing she ever did was ground me from church. (Fast forward...
Uncovering our Client’s History of Sanity
The first open-air cremation I ever attended was of a psychiatrist and Buddhist teacher Ed Podvoll, or Llama Mingyur. It was the winter of 2003 at the Rocky Mountain Shambhala Center. There was a light snow on the ground, chants and prayers in the air and ashes in the...
Thank God it’s Monday!!
Thank God it’s Monday!! If you are not saying “Thank God It’s Monday!” on your way to work each Monday, please, do yourself and everyone else a favor, turn your car around and go home. Get Your Mind Right If the most effective agent for healing in the work we do are...
Here’s Why Your Treatment Outcomes Suck (In Four Simple Words)..
In 2005 I stepped out of residential treatment work because I was shocked. I was as a freshly minted grad student working in a men’s treatment facility and I was admittedly doe-eyed and I was appalled by how abysmal the treatment outcomes were and how everybody seemed...
Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll and….. MONEY.
There's a whole lot that does happen in treatment. And there's a whole lot more that doesn't. And maybe it's not the role of treatment providers to do many of the things that support sustained recovery, movement beyond drugs and alcohol and mental health...
A Smile In Hell
I grew up reading Dante's Inferno. My mom was a high school English teacher and tutored students at our home, so I had the benefit of being surrounded by books and enriched by reading and discussing many of the great classics and works of literature. My mom even made...
The Subject Tonight Is Hope
The subject tonight is Hope And for tomorrow night as well, As a matter of fact I know of no better topic For us to discuss So that we can all truly Live! The illuminated and radiant Persian poet, Hafiz, wrote The Subject Tonight Is Love. Standing on his...
Learning to Suffer Better
I was a competitive kid growing up. So when I got to the meditation cushion I was going for gold. I really wanted to stop the pain, stop the thoughts, and wake - up although questioned enlightenment to some extent. I spent the first week or so of my first dathun (a...