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One evening at my support group, we did an exercise that annoyed me. The guy leading the discussion posed the following question, giving each member two minutes to answer: What is standing between you and total happiness right now? It sounded like something pulled from the appendix of a life coaching handbook. One of those sharp, poignant questions that’s supposed to cut to the core of the client’s soul…

Consider the following scenario. An employee casually comments to a company executive about a challenge they’re having with their work. That leader listens attentively and thanks the team member for bringing the issue to their attention. Then they go back to whatever seven things they were doing before the interruption. And about a month later when nothing changes, the complaining employee throws their hands up in the air and says,…

Nobody likes anything anymore. Everyone is too concerned with being seen as cool and clever, and they can’t accomplish that when they put themselves on the line. Much easier to analyze everything to a pulp. People garner more attention and greater social status by making snide comments, explaining why a thing sucks and why they’re above it. Joy is boring at best and deluded at worst. Part of this…

Here’s proof that pressure is a choice. When was the last time you complained about how you needed to catch up on something? Maybe it was email, television, work, sleep, laundry, life goals, books, podcasts, social media, celebrity gossip, news, whatever. For some reason, you felt a nagging sense of being behind. Like the two women who were seated next to me on the subway. One of them was…

Greed has officially been elevated to the status of virtue. Gekko’s speech comes to mind: Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. But there’s a different brand of greed that’s lesser known. It’s not necessarily the intense and…

This guy at my old office was a total pain in the ass. All he did was complain. And not in that productive startup way, where people channel their frustrations into doing innovative work that solves problems and creates real value in the world. He just bitched. About every little thing. Each new gripe added another drop of swampy backwater of unproductive energy. Reminds me of the morning we came…

My yoga teacher, noticing me sitting out for a few posters during class, once shared the following recommendation. Anytime your body can’t do something, that’s just information. Meaning, it’s not an emergency that calls for swift action. It’s not a trigger for useless rumination. It’s not reason to beat ourselves up for being imperfectly human. It’s just information. And thankfully, the bridge of the breath can be the thing…

One reason so many people just surrender to the status quo and do nothing is because they’re tired. Not physically tired, like when you need sleep, finish a marathon or work two double shifts back to back. Rather, they’re tired because of decision fatigue. They’ve been making too many choices. They haven’t figured out how to simply their daily lives by deferring, delegating or deleting the work inside their…

The expression, buttering me up, means to overly flatter someone in the hopes of getting something in return. The phrase has religious origins. Hindu temples popularized the ritual hundreds of years ago, where worshippers would throw balls of ghee, clarified butter, at statues of their deities. By buttering up the gods, so to speak, worshippers would be rewarded with peace and good harvest. What’s interesting to me is when…

My friend is a vegetarian, but he calls himself a recovering vegan. His favorite joke about his former diet is, vegans don’t care about animals, they just want to be angry. It’s an extreme stereotype, but it does make me wonder about the emotion of anger and what it does to us. Because being mad can be deeply empowering. We feel energized and righteous when we’re angry, but that…