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When we experience pain, a few things happen inside of our bodies.  From a biological standpoint, we touch a hot stove, a nerve ending senses the stimulus, it sends the signal to the central nervous system, the pain center in the brain receives the message and then we yell a curse word as loud as we can.  But from an intellectual standpoint, something else happens. Once the pain registers,…

When there’s a blizzard, the enterprising neighborhood kids have a choice.  They can stand on the street corner all morning and wait for homeowners to pick them.  They can ring people’s doorbells, make a pitch for their shoveling services and try not to get rejected.  Or, they can study the weather reports all week, canvas the streets the night before the storm, give out their cell phone number to…

The ability to communicate clearly and intelligently and proactively and persuasively is the price of admission.  But the audacity to originate communication rituals that are integrated into the larger culture, that’s how real, sustainable communities is built.  And whether those rituals are performed within a workplace, family system, peer group, professional association or even a local yoga studio, they’re guaranteed to create a foundation of trust and meaning that…

If our dream is too small, we’ll become unconsciously locked into a single, narrow path and insulate ourselves from future opportunity and growth.  But if our dream is too big, we’ll become overwhelmed by option anxiety, vision ourselves into paralysis and get nowhere.  The secret, then, is crafting a dream that’s specific enough to feel like the destination is unique and personal and achievable, but broad enough to feel…

When it comes to the interpersonal realm, the best preventative medicine is to assume that you won’t be understood.  That your message won’t be received in the exact way that you want it to.  Which may sound pessimistic, but it’s really just realistic.  Because most people are terrible audience members. They’re too distracted, defensive, biased and judgmental. They’re not listening as much as they are waiting to talk.  And…

It’s tempting to expect existence to obey our wishes.  To demand that the universe fulfill its obligation to make us happy. And to feel deserving of a world that reliably conforms to our wishes and desires.  But in this naïve prioritizing of I wish above it is, we only set ourselves up for disappointment, disillusion and resentment. And we rob ourselves of any chance to establish a healthy relationship with reality.  On…

Many of us come from a family tradition where people are taught to do inner work. Where the journey into the infinite depths of our own interior is always viewed as a meaningful activity.  As a result, we often take for granted just how much reflection we really do. Not everybody has the time or temperament, and so it’s something worth being grateful for.  But although the mind is…

I have a friend who designs aerial sequences for a traveling musical.  She tells me that most of the cast’s highflying stunts are executed in the dark.  And so, the stage performers are masters of adaptation, which is a term ocular physiologists use for the ability of the human eye to adjust to various levels of darkness and light.  In fact, a critical part of their preparation includes daily routines…

Each of us has fundamental set of beliefs that are so ingrained in our society and culture and tribal history, that we hardly know they exist, much less examine the validity of them.  And so, the moment an outsider questions something that we have already put away in our drawers, the whole house shakes.  It’s part of the human survival mechanism. We reflexively press the delete button on anything…

Before I moved to the second the largest city in the world, a friend who grew up here gave me a piece of advice that I’ll never forget. When you live in this town, people will feed you with things that will make you feel bigger than you really are. Don’t let the skyscrapers fool you.  Interestingly enough, I never found that to be true. In fact, I found…