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Moore’s brilliant research on the soul’s religion reminds us that dream work doesn’t necessarily have to help us uncover the clues to the meaning of our personality.  It can simply be a daily practice that keeps us in touch with the basic narratives we are living. A portal to transcendence and wonder that helps us get to know our soul better, increase our participation in the greater universe and…

Each of us seeks the pride of having lived up to our expectations for ourselves.  It’s what allows us to feel strong and human and alive.  But there’s a fine line between ambition and ammunition. There’s a danger in following our dreams so intensely that we forget to enjoy life.  And so, if you realize that your standards are high beyond reach or reason, that the demands you place…

Skynner’s bestselling book on family and marital therapy defines a control freak as: A perfectionist defending themselves against their own inner vulnerabilities in the belief that if they are not in total control, they risk exposing themselves once more to childhood angst. They often manipulate and pressure others to change, in order to avoid having to change themselves.  It’s a difficult personality to be around. When person is willing to…

The world is out there, demanding that we do things their way.  And it will always get judgmental whenever it suspects we’re deviating from the standard.  It’s textbook tribal behavior. Whenever there’s a separation between one person’s thinking and values from the tightly packed morals of their community of origin, the natives grow restless. And they do everything in their power to reel the radicals back in, keeping them…

Cartoons made my creative life possible. From an early age, animation has always been a source of profound inspiration, joy and meaning for me. Schultz and Watterson shifted my inner geography from day one. In fact, one of my early career aspirations was to become a cartoonist. I even bought books and took classes. And you couldn’t pry the pencil and paper away from me with a crowbar. But…

We all live by a certain set of rules and habits that we wish everyone around us will adopt.  But we should never get our hopes up. As satisfying as it is to influence people to live by the lights of our worldview, we should never become enamored with our own ways of doing things.  Otherwise we’ll drive ourselves crazy trying to understand why everyone around us doesn’t share our preferences…

Forgive them, for they know not what they do.  This widely quoted scripture is called the word of forgiveness, which is theologically interpreted as the prayer for those who carried out the famous biblical crucifixion.  Jesus was asking forgiveness for those who put him to death.  But of course, the plea was for also for all of humanity.  And so, putting religion aside, it’s an important lesson in interpersonal…

Carlin once said that when it came to attracting the right romantic partner, a good sense of humor always showed a mature way of being in the world, as opposed to some humorless person who may just explode and kill you and your children.  Absurd, but true.  He who laughs, lasts.  That was one of the first traits I noticed in my wife. She had a laugh that made…

We should never feel guilty for having our own life.  Each of us is entitled to have our own needs met, from privacy to dietary to physical to psychological. It’s part of the universal declaration of human rights.  The problem is, we still guilt ourselves into thinking that other people might die if we abide by our needs instead of theirs.  And so, we people please to make everyone…

Gibran famously wrote that each time we experience sorrow, our capacity for joy increases. The deeper that sorrow carves into our being, the more joy we can contain.  And so, when life gives us the gift of a low, we ought to feel happy that something can even make us feel that sad. Because means that we’re alive and breathing and real.  That oscillation of dark and light is…