Learning How to Stay

Learning How to Stay

Meeting Discomfort Without Immediately Escaping, Fixing, or Reacting

Keynote  
Program  

When discomfort shows up, our instinct is often to make it go away. We distract ourselves, stay busy, try to fix the situation, reach for control, or react before we've had time to understand what is happening.

Drawing from his experience with recovery, mindfulness, and the ordinary practice of beginning again, Don explores what it means to stay present when life feels uncomfortable. Through personal stories, reflection, and practical exercises, participants learn to create a little more space between what they feel and what they do next.

Participants will explore common ways we avoid or react to discomfort; practice creating space between an uncomfortable experience and the response that follows; and develop simple, practical ways to return to the present when thoughts, emotions, or circumstances pull us away.

Don Phelps — Motivational Speaker

Don Phelps

Identity, recovery, and moving from performance to presence

Don Phelps is a keynote speaker, author, and Certified Recovery Support Specialist who brings lived experience and honest storytelling to conversations about recovery, identity, and change. His programs help audiences explore what happens when familiar roles, identities, and ways of coping stop working, and how we begin building something more honest in their place. Personal, conversational, and grounded in lived experience, Don speaks to behavioral health, recovery, nonprofit, higher education, and broader audiences navigating change and transition.

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