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Positive Affirmations for Kids: Build Confidence & Character 0

Affirmations aren’t just for adults! Kids can benefit from positive affirmations too. These simple positive messages can help children and teens build confidence, manage emotions, and develop the skills they need to navigate challenges. More than just feel-good phrases, affirmations can reinforce positive behaviors, encourage better decision-making, and support a growth mindset.

In this post, you'll find creative ways to introduce affirmations to kids, fun activities to make them engaging, ready-to-use affirmations, and guidance for creating personalized affirmations. 

Here's everything you need to know to use affirmations to help your children and teens build confidence, resilience, and positive character traits.

Silver Lining Series of Workbooks, Journals, and Planners 0

Through my work as a counselor, I’ve seen firsthand what helps people build resilience, improve relationships, and create positive change in their lives. I bring that experience into my writing, creating resources that are both self-help (for individuals) and helper-help (for professionals like therapists, teachers, and group leaders).

Each of my workbooks and journals is designed to be practical, engaging, and easy to use—offering explanations, guided exercises, journaling prompts, and actionable strategies that support emotional well-being, personal development, and goal achievement. There's also a planner to motivate organization and celebrate achievements.

Whether you're working through anxiety, exploring emotional intelligence, or simply looking for a better way to track your to-dos, these workbooks, journals, and planner provide structured support for real-life challenges.

Find the Right Workbook, Journal, or Planner for You

Below is a list of workbooks in my Silver Lining Series, each with a brief description of what it offers. These print books cover a range of topics, including emotional intelligence, stress resilience, journaling for self-reflection and emotional processing, and practical tools for daily organization.

(Note: These links go to Amazon.com (U.S.), but my books are also available on other Amazon sites like Amazon.ca and Amazon.com.au.)

After this list, I provide a fuller description of each book. 

Building Skills to Uplevel Life: Silver Lining Emotional Intelligence Workbook

Emotions can be confusing and overwhelming—but they don’t have to be. I created Building Skills to Uplevel Life: Silver Lining Emotional Intelligence Workbook to help you understand and harness the power of emotional intelligence (EQ or EI) to make your life better. 

As I was working on this book, I realized that many others who talk about emotional intelligence only focus on how to deal better with emotional pain and discomfort. I definitely wanted to cover that in my workbook, but I also wanted to give equal attention to the other side of the coin: feel-good emotions.

A happy, fulfilled life is the result of identifying what the emotions we're experiencing have to offer: mining the uncomfortable ones for information and direction and savoring the feel-good for optimizing joy and satisfaction.

In UpLevel Life, you’ll find:

✅ A fresh, easy-to-grasp explanation of emotions and what they’re trying to tell you.

✅ Worksheets and exercises to help you develop self-awareness, resilience, and communication skills.

✅ Techniques for managing difficult emotions in healthy, productive ways.

✅ Strategies to boost positive emotions using research-backed Positive Psychology approaches.

✅ Quick grounding resets and relaxation activities to help you stay clear-headed in stressful moments.

✅ Journaling prompts for processing emotions and breaking free from emotional baggage.

✅ Essential relationship skills like empathy, assertiveness, and tact to help you navigate personal and professional interactions.

✅ A step-by-step anger management system to handle conflict with confidence.

Emotional intelligence is a skill you can strengthen, and the benefits ripple into every area of life—work, relationships, decision-making, and even overall happiness. Whether you’re just starting your EQ journey or looking to refine your skills, this workbook gives you practical tools to build emotional mastery and create meaningful change.

Becoming Calm Anxiety and Stress Resilience Workbook and Journal

I know what it’s like to struggle with anxiety. As a therapist—and someone who has dealt with anxiety myself—I understand how overwhelming it can feel. That’s why I created Becoming Calm: Silver Lining Anxiety and Stress Resilience Workbook and Journal, a guided workbook filled with practical strategies to help you manage stress and feel more at ease in your daily life.

This workbook isn’t just about understanding anxiety—it’s about actively working through it and getting to a calmer baseline. 

Becoming Calm has anxiety covered:

✅ Expert guidance to help you understand anxiety, how it works, and what you can do about it.

✅ Worksheets to challenge anxious thinking patterns and build a more stress-resilient mindset.

✅ Practical tips and techniques to reduce anxiety and manage stress in the moment.

✅ Relaxation exercises to ease tension and promote calm.

✅ Grounding strategies to stop panic and overreactions in their tracks.

✅ Journaling prompts to help you process anxious thoughts and emotions.

✅ Simple lifestyle shifts that support long-term stress resilience.

I wrote and designed Becoming Calm to be both informative and interactive, so you can immediately put these strategies into practice. Whether you deal with everyday stress, generalized anxiety (GAD), phobias, or panic, this workbook gives you the tools to navigate life with more confidence and peace of mind.

Learn, Let Go, Lighten Up Emotional Detox Journal & Workbook

Holding onto emotional pain can be exhausting. Unresolved feelings, past hurts, and lingering stress can weigh you down, making it harder to move forward.

Learn, Let Go, Lighten Up: Silver Lining Emotional Detox Journal & Workbook is designed to help you unpack emotional baggage, process difficult feelings, and gain clarity so you can feel lighter and more at peace.

This journal/workbook combination isn’t just about venting emotions—it’s about working through them in a way that supports healing and growth.

Inside Learn, Let Go, Lighten Up, you’ll find:

✅ Research-based journaling prompts that encourage deep reflection and emotional processing.

✅ Worksheets and exercises to help you explore emotions, thoughts, and insights—the three key components of effective journaling.

✅ Guidance on letting go of unresolved emotions in a way that promotes healing and self-awareness.

✅ Strategies for processing stress, trauma, and anger so you can move forward with clarity.

✅ Journaling as a tool for emotional intelligence—helping you better understand and navigate difficult emotions in the future.

Processing emotions—both old and new—creates space for greater clarity, resilience, and emotional freedom. Whether you're working through past wounds or managing emotions as they arise, Learn, Let Go, Lighten Up provides a structured yet flexible approach to emotional detox and renewal, helping you lighten the weight of the past while building skills to handle whatever comes next.

Increasing My Happiness Quotient Joy Journal & Workbook

Happiness isn’t just something you stumble upon—it’s something you can build from the inside out.

 Your Happiness Quotient (HQ) is your ability to experience joy, and like any skill, it can be strengthened with practice. That’s why I created Increasing My Happiness Quotient: Silver Lining Joy Journal & Workbook, a fun and engaging way to boost positive emotions, increase self-awareness, and bring more joy into your daily life.

Each day’s pages include journaling prompts, activities, and space to capture your happiness highlights, helping you develop habits that support long-term well-being.

In Increasing My Happiness Quotient, you’ll find:

✅ Prompts and exercises to help you focus on feel-good emotions and get the most out of them.

✅ Tools to increase self-awareness and shift toward a more positive mindset.

✅ Practical happiness skills you can develop to make joy a regular part of your life.

✅ Space to notice your small smilables—the little things that brighten your day.

✅ Bonus smiles and laughs with games, stretches, and playful activities designed to lighten your mood.

Joy doesn’t have to be fleeting. This journal and workbook help you recognize, savor, and nurture the happiness already within reach.

Whether you’re looking for a boost or simply want to make the most of life’s bright moments, Increasing My Happiness Quotient is your guide to a lighter, brighter, more joyful you.

Roses, Thorns and Buds Journal for Daily Joys, Challenges and Inspirations

Most days are a mix of happy moments, challenges, and opportunities for growth. 

Roses, Thorns, and Buds: Silver Lining Journal is designed to help you embrace the good, process the difficult, and recognize new possibilities—all in one simple daily practice.

Roses are the bright spots in your day—the moments of happiness, big or small, that bring joy and gratitude.

Thorns are the challenges, frustrations, or setbacks you face—things that may be uncomfortable but offer valuable lessons.

Buds are the sparks of possibility—things you’re looking forward to, ideas taking shape, or moments of inspiration waiting to bloom.

Roses, Thorns, and Buds provides:

✅ Six months of daily prompts to help you acknowledge, reflect, and grow.

✅ Bonus weekly quote pages with inspiration, encouragement, and fun activities like word puzzles, mazes, and coloring.

✅ A tool for personal reflection or shared connection—use it solo or with a partner, family, or group to spark meaningful conversations.

Taking a few moments each day to check in with yourself can help you feel acknowledged (even if just by you), grateful for what you have, and inspired to see what tomorrow brings.

Roses, Thorns, and Buds makes it easy to balance the highs and lows while cultivating a more mindful and inspired approach to life.

It's also a great gift idea! It's like giving your wife, girlfriend, husband, boyfriend, kids, mother, father, friends, teachers, and anyone else on your list six months of daily roses.

Discovering How Foods Affect Me Elimination Diet Journal

Eating foods you are allergic or sensitive to can negatively impact your body and mind. Food intolerance can contribute to depression, irritability, and anxiety. (I go into detail about the link between food sensitivity and mood in my book Feed Your Calm: Anti-Anxiety Anti-Stress Diet and Supplement Tips for Stress Resilience.) 

Doing an elimination diet may be needed if you suspect you're having a negative reaction to foods but aren't sure which ones.

I know how challenging and overwhelming doing an elimination diet can be because I've done them myself. Those experiences have also taught me how dramatic improvements can be when you adjust your eating based on the results. 

Discovering How Foods Affect Me: Silver Lining Elimination Diet Journal is designed to help you easily navigate every phase of an elimination diet so you can uncover food sensitivities, intolerances, and allergies with clarity and confidence.

Whether you're following a structured plan or designing your own approach, this journal helps you stay organized, track symptoms, and make meaningful connections between what you eat and how you feel.

The journal covers four phases: Observation, Planning, Elimination, and Reintroduction. You may not use each chapter, or you might use them in a different order. That's not a problem. Use the sections that are part of your program. 

Discovering How Foods Affect Me includes:

✅ A structured yet flexible format to support any elimination diet approach.

✅ Guidance on what to track—from food, water, and supplements to mood, symptoms, sleep, and energy levels.

✅ Daily journal pages with easy-to-use prompts, a quick-entry system, and an encouraging quote to keep you motivated.

✅ Four elimination diet phases—Observation, Planning, Elimination, and Reintroduction—so you can track patterns at every stage. 

✅ Quick-reference tracking charts to simplify symptom and food logging for faster, more efficient journaling.

Elimination diets can be a powerful tool for revealing what helps or hinders your well-being. With Discovering How Foods Affect Me, you’ll have a clear, organized way to document your journey—helping you find answers and make informed choices for your health.

From To-Do to Ta-Done! 6-Month Daily To-Do List Planner

Traditional planners never quite worked for me when it came to managing my daily to-dos—so I created one that does. From To-Do to Ta-Done!: Silver Lining 6-Month Daily To-Do List Planner is designed to help you stay organized, prioritize what matters, and feel the satisfaction of checking off completed tasks.

Along with daily task pages, this planner includes bonus sections to help you clarify goals, manage projects, and even track what not to do.

From To-Do to Ta-Done! gives you the flexibility to start at any time of year, with dateable pages that put you in control. The simple, uncluttered layout maximizes space for your to-do list while making it easy to set priorities and track accomplishments.

Inside, you’ll find:

✅ 180 daily to-do list pages with space to record tasks, priorities, and notes.

✅ Check boxes to mark (and celebrate!) when tasks move from to-do to ta-done!

✅ Encouraging quotes to give you a little boost each day.

✅ Bonus sections to help you declutter your list and focus on what really matters:

• Goals list to keep track of big-picture objectives.
• Projects list to break down longer-term tasks.
• To-be list (inspired by Richard Branson) to focus on personal growth.
• Not-to-do list (inspired by Erik Qualman) to help you set boundaries and avoid distractions.

If you’re looking for a to-do list system that actually works, this planner gives you the structure and flexibility to stay on top of your tasks—without feeling overwhelmed. Start using From To-Do to Ta-Done! and turn your to-dos into accomplishments!

Building Resilience: 20 Life Lesson Quotes with Graphics 0

Building resilience is key to navigating life’s challenges. It helps you adapt, recover, and grow stronger when faced with difficulties. Healthy, resilient coping mechanisms help you bounce back after adversity. This post explores how hard times both require and strengthen resilience, highlighting six key qualities that support it: courage, patience, optimism, gratitude, flexibility, and perseverance.

Discover 20 short, inspiring, motivational resilience quotes to help you turn obstacles into opportunities for personal growth.

Tackle Emotional Triggers: Learn What Sets You Off 0

Emotional triggers are feelings, events, situations, places, people, and things that propel overreactions, anxiety, anger, withdrawal, or other negative automatic responses. They are often associated with negative past experiences that get tapped into by current events. 

Recognizing and managing your triggers is vital for your own well-being, happy relationships, and career success. 

Integrative Medicine for Mental Health: A Holistic Approach 0

Integrative Medicine for Mental Health is a new and exciting approach to therapy that acknowledges the body-mind connection. It recognizes the reality that what happens in your body impacts your mood, reactions, outlook, and ability to manage stress.

This therapeutic model combines conventional and research-based complementary methods to address the many factors influencing your emotional and psychological health.

As a therapist, I’ve seen firsthand how this approach can boost counseling results, making positive change quicker and more profound.

If we don’t consider physical factors that might be impacting your anxiety, irritability, stress, and depression, the best psychological therapy techniques can result in us spinning our wheels. They might help but only get us so far.

Mental health issues often involve an interplay of biology, personal history, lifestyle, and stressors. That’s why an integrative approach is so valuable—it provides multiple tools to address challenges and builds a foundation for lasting well-being.

Aromatherapy Essential Oil Safety Tips: What You Need to Know 0

Essential oils can be a powerful tool for relaxation, wellness, and self-care, but their potency requires careful handling. From proper dilution to understanding safety around children, pets, and pregnant individuals, this guide provides essential tips to ensure safe aromatherapy practices.

Learn how to protect your loved ones while enjoying the benefits of these concentrated plant extracts.