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The beautiful thing about interacting with animals is, you know exactly when they like you. The indicators of interest are always honest and often instantaneous. They will hold eye contact, lean against you, wag their tails, lift their eyebrows, lick your face, smile at you, purr loudly, follow you around, hang out by your desk, play games with you, seek your affection, or simply relax in your presence. It…

Once my coworker accidentally boarded the wrong subway, fell asleep in her seat and ended up on the other side of the city. She messaged the team feeling embarrassed and calling herself useless for running late. Immediately, we all agreed that it was a rite of passage, as it happens to everybody. Congratulations on being an official urbanite, we joked. This event was a reminder that setting boundaries, at…

The common denominator in all of our problems is us. External factors may play a small part in our dissatisfaction, but most of the time, the call is coming from inside the house. Whatever we are blaming is merely the symptom, not the source. It’s like my coworker who complains ad nauseam about the dating scene in this city. After several years without meeting someone special, he is convinced…

When people we love don’t return our calls, it triggers a host of complicated emotions. There’s fear, where we wonder if they’re okay and hope that nothing bad has happened to them. There’s dissatisfaction, since the expectation in the social contract of all human relationships is communicating. There’s guilt, as we start worrying what we might have done or said to push them away. There’s apathy, where we just…

Setting boundaries doesn’t always have to be some big, sweeping, grandiose, philosophical proclamation about the limits of our integrity. It can be as small and simple as not picking up the phone after a certain hour at night. Or choosing to go to bed early when the rest of the group is still up partying. Or not checking email within an hour of waking up. Or not engaging with…

Years ago, one of our new employees told us that he didn’t feel welcomed during his first week at our company. Despite his office orientation and a few friendly faces checking in to see how he was carrying on, most of the team was heads down in their typical day to day, and he was feeling disconnected from the group. This tension is common at organizations. It’s personally happened…

Gallup conducted a workplace poll revealing that twenty percent of employees put in more than sixty hours a week, and nearly fifty percent of employees clock in at least fifty hours. Hooray. Americans are finally number one at something again. And yet, multiple psychological studies have shown that humans can only concentrate for about half of that amount of time, and only do real work for about a third…

Anytime we start complaining about something we can’t control, unhappiness awaits. But anytime we start weighing our options about the things we can control, empowerment ensues. Here’s an example that everyone should be able relate to: Have you ever listened to someone bemoan the price of gas, or the cost of the ticket for their daily commute? If so, did that ever improve their situation? Of course not. Because…

There’s a concept in the conservation world called the waste hierarchy. It’s the order of priority of actions to be taken to reduce the amount of waste generated, and to improve overall waste management processes and programs. You’ve probably heard it before. Reduce, reuse, recycle. This concept first poked its head out of the trash pile and seeped into the cultural consciousness in the early seventies. Vietnam caused citizens…

An allergy is a hypersensitivity to a specific substance. It’s a condition in where body’s immune system reacts abnormally to a foreign element, resulting in everything from hives to rashes to headaches to difficulty breathing. As someone who’s been allergic to cats, dogs, ragweed and dust for his whole life, this ain’t no joke. Allergies can be debilitating. Quick history lesson, the word allergy has been around only since…