I recently heard an interview with Dr. Joe Vitale, contemporary spiritual and self-growth guide to the masses. (Did you know that he was homeless [but not lost] for a while and completely destitute for a decade before realizing his full potential?) Vitale spoke about intention, the act of consciously, purposefully directing your will and attention toward something you are trying to accomplish … [Read more...]
When Parents Suffer the Loss of Expectation
Isn't it just so frustrating and stressful when things don't go your way? We should be able to have our cake and eat it too. Right? But who ever said life was supposed to cooperate like that? Now, believe it or not, I'm all for visualization, energy, and spiritual exercises that are designed to align our deeper motivations and energies with our outward actions so that we draw more … [Read more...]
3 Essential Elements of Genuine Happiness
It’s all over the news these days. There are hundreds of TED talks on this topic. Researchers are devoting their entire careers to this theme. I’m talking about the often elusive cultivation of genuine, lasting happiness. To hopefully not bore you to happy tears, I’m going to take a slightly different angle on this topic while synthesizing some of the hugely important research on this hugely … [Read more...]
Compassion Transforms Parental Suffering
I was walking to work the other day and happened to witness a disturbing interaction between a mother and a young child. This child was running away from the mother (and grandmother) while the caregivers waited, with increasing frustration, for the child’s return. I was across the street, a very busy and loud street. But I clearly heard the shouts and agitated pleas of the mother, … [Read more...]
Hope For A Greater Good
It's so easy these days to be down on the world. There is so much misery and suffering, so much war and violence, so much self-righteousness, so much self-hatred. And yet… And yet, every single day there are millions of people across our planet making enormous strides for a higher and positive purpose. But we forget this. You may even forget this about yourself. You may be one of … [Read more...]
Why New Years Resolutions Fail
Happy New Year! Now that the celebrations are over, let’s talk resolutions and why so many new years resolutions fail. (According to some research, up to 90% of us don't successfully keep our resolutions). How many of those seemingly admirable resolutions have you actually kept? Really reflect on that for moment. If the answer is a wistful, “not many” or “none” or “what do you mean kept?”, then … [Read more...]
To Text or Not To Text: That Is Not The Question
So he starts picking a fight with me and yells, “What’s wrong with you, why do you always do that?!?” And I am so pissed and yell back, “You always do this! Why can’t you just calm down!” If you’ve ever been in a really intense moment of a relationship, this might sound or feel familiar. But what if I told you that this was a real fight someone had over text. I had the interesting privilege … [Read more...]
Sourcing Our Good Fortune: Making Happiness More Possible
We often log thousands of hours of our lives trying to figure out who has done us wrong and how we ended up this way. Our parents may not have given us what we really needed when we were children, peers may have bullied us on the playground, and fear may have cast a long shadow on our confidence to speak up, assert ourselves, or get what we really needed. We often attempt to trace back what … [Read more...]
Turning Schadenfreude On Its Head: Cultivating Joy for Others’ Good Fortune
The Germans have a word for delighting in the misery and misfortune of others – Schaedenfreude. We might initially react to the concept of Schaedenfreude with a resounding “Not me! That’s horrible to think about. Who would feel good about others’ feeling bad?” Well, it turns out that Schaedenfreude may not be all that foreign to us if we explore what’s going on under the surface of our everyday … [Read more...]
How Mindfulness Tears Down the Walls of Stress
Have you ever gotten really stressed out and then thought about how beautiful the world really is, how much you really love the person who may have pissed you off, or how you are finally going to commit to volunteering at that homeless shelter? If those thoughts or motivations have never really crossed your mind immediately after feeling overwhelmed, out of control, or super stressed, you are … [Read more...]
