THE BLOG
STORY, SAUCE & SASS
May you come to know and understand the preciousness of your life.
Thanksgiving day is about thanks. It’s about recognizing the people in our life and noting how grateful we are for them. It is about family and traditions and food. Yet, we seem to be losing sight of this and become focused on consumption and I don’t just mean pumpkin...
Emotional Agility – how to develop it (you want it)!
Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert concluded from their research a few years ago that "a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind." Essentially, they concluded that us humans have this amazing ability to think about things that are...
Transitions
Schools and universities are back in session. The leaves are starting to fall from the plane trees in my neighborhood. One day we need our wellington boots, the next we need sunscreen. I find myself wanting the weather to commit one way or the other. I desire the...
Categories, Categorization and Compassion
Categorization Friends, enemies, lovers, strangers. We divide up our world and the people in it, treating people differently, based on which category they fall into. Most of us do it - we treat those we love with preferential treatment, offering them kindnesses,...
Stress!
(This article also appears in the Partners to Empowerment April Newsletter). How Does Stress Occur? Our bodies are cleverly designed to react to stress. When we detect a stressful event, stress hormones such as adrenaline, cause our blood to move from the brain and...
The Ability to Accept vs. The Ability to Change
At the Google conference, Wisdom 2.0 in San Francisco last weekend, I went to a talk by a renowned writer and speaker. She made a comment which stuck with me, because it seemed to encapsulate the value and importance of generalities in how we think in the East and the...
How Do We Become Compassionate to All People?
To start on this path one must develop compassion for all beings, even those who we may find challenging or perhaps even repugnant, due to their actions or words. These challenging people are in fact our most important teachers, because without them, we have no...
Meditation keeps you young and strong!
In June I wrote about how meditation affects your brain. Specifically, fMRI scans revealed that long time meditators had increased activity in the parts of the brain that are important in processing empathy – especially in perceiving the mental and emotional state of...
Exercise your mind, exercise your body
Everyone knows the value of physical exercise. We are taught this in school, our doctors tell us this when we have check ups and even popular culture reminds us that so-and-so lost her baby weight by exercising as well as eating healthily. Why don't we place the same...
Attachment: Good or Bad?
Depending who you ask, “attachment” can be something that you strive for or something that you studiously avoid. Both require practice, yet appear at first glance to be fundamentally different concepts. Developmental Attachment The British psychoanalyst Bowlby coined...
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