What you help a child to love can be more important than what you help him to learn. —African Proverb Last month my Aunt Agnes passed away at the age of 86; I have cherished her my entire life. Her funeral was one of the most beautiful I have ever attended. A nun with the...Read More

The Rise and Fall of Urges: Surfing the Emotional Wake It is more difficult to murder a phantom than a reality. —Virginia Wolf A recent study in Germany suggests that we spend a full quarter of our waking hours resisting urges. Yes, our desires are frequent, variable in intensity and largely unproblematic. Our urges create...Read More

A Parable on How to Fix What May be All Wrong A friend of mine had a sudden revelation that he didn’t want to go into his office, he hated his job. After being promoted out of his vocation, solving software problems, he was now an executive, managing projects, people, and politics and earning more...Read More

Habits are cobwebs at first; cables at last. —Chinese Proverb There is new research on the habit loop, which finds that when a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision-making. Like being asleep, some habits can be effortless and occur unthinkingly. Hundreds of habits influence our days, how we get dressed, talk to...Read More

If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things. —Albert Einstein Most New Years resolutions fail by February because we lack skill or motivation or both. Setting all-or-nothing goals, goals that are too vague, unrealistic, too ambitious, too numerous, or goals that we really don’t want...Read More

“No crying on the yacht”  is what I overhead a mother tell her teenage daughter shopping in a clothing store.   While a hilarious and abrupt way to identify corrosive self-pity, it can keep the spirit of thanksgiving with us all year-round.  A healthy outside starts from the inside. Being kind and compassionate are a natural...Read More

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious — Albert Einstein Our health care system is strongly oriented to “fixing” what is broken and categorizes over 36,000 ways the human body can go wrong. Rather than ask what’s wrong in our lives we can pay more attention to what is working well…. to...Read More

Consult Your Teenage Self to Find Your Power The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.  —Carl Jung Having power is having integrity of the soul. This requires that you regularly express your best self.  If something is getting in the way of that integrity, ask yourself, if I met my...Read More

Divide and Conquer. A military metaphor: in order to rule [the self] don’t allow alliances of your enemies [unfulfilled or unspecified needs].   Truth isn’t always beauty, but the hunger for it is —Nadine Gordimer, South African Nobel Prize Novelist The overweight epidemic continues to skyrocket, with more than 2/3rds of us overweight. Most of us...Read More

Set up a life that does not need escaping from —Seth Godin Earlier this month we celebrated Independence Day, the idea of liberty and what it means to be really free.  Since we live in the land of liberty, why are so many feeling imprisoned and lack a sense of freedom in our lives?  Feeling stressed-out,...Read More