Blog

Companies always seem to want more and more from their employees. Managers continue to ratchet up how much they demand from their team members, while workers get increasingly overwhelmed with unrealistic expectations about their jobs. Bottomless corporate pits. Nothing you do is ever good enough for them, no matter how good you are, no matter much effort and hard work you put in. Have you ever worked in that…

There’s a fascinating distinction called the state versus the trait. Neuroscience research suggests that any regular practice of a mindfulness based activity includes both state and trait changes. The practice temporarily changes the condition of our brain and the corresponding pattern of activity or connectivity, aka, state change. But it also alters our personality following a longer period of practice, aka, trait change. Think about certain habits people practice regularly, like…

Rehabilitation is a lifelong journey. Whether we are managing our anxiety, controlling our addiction or dealing with some other physical ailment or emotional injury, all personal transformation happens through the building process of small acts. Even if we are told that ninety days or six months or a full year is considered the gold standard of treatment for our condition, it’s healthier and frankly more realistic to assume that…

One habit for preventing sending our brains into a frenzy is to step away from the keyboard when we’re feeling particularly emotional. After all, the internet is a hypochondriac’s nightmare. It’s a minefield of confirmation bias, misguided judgments, amateur opinions and extreme scenarios. Think of it this way. When was the last time typing your symptoms into a search engine actually made you feel calmer? There’s even a word…

Our reptilian brain doesn’t speak the language of logic. It’s a lower life form that exists solely to foster survival. The amygdala knows nothing of perspective and reason, it just detects threats. And so, when we find ourselves tumbling down a fantastic realm of fear, that claustrophobic, hurried state where worry agitates the peace right out of us, the best thing we can do is call that fear by…

We live in a culture of more. And so, we convince ourselves that we need a lot of things. Our mantra is, well, there is always more out there, so why not acquire it? When the reality is, we don’t actually need that much. Pretty much everything beyond food, shelter, water, clothing and relationships isn’t really a need, it’s a want. And that’s perfectly fine. Wanting things is good….

Are you free enough to risk being seen by other people? Most of us are not. At least, not when we’re young. It takes years of working on ourselves and working with others before we reach that level of comfort with self. This explains why wearing a nametag was so awkward for the first few years. It’s not that people were suddenly noticing me, it’s that people were actually…

Writer’s block has been a widely documented problem throughout history. Everyone from authors to cartoonists to songwriters to magicians have shared their struggles with the temporary loss or ability to continue producing work. Many of whom were driven to madness. This problem goes back many centuries, but the official condition was first described in the late forties. Bergler’s psychiatry book studied writers who suffered from it. Bergler spent years…

Buber said before there is a self, there is an other. A person cannot approach the divine by reaching beyond the human, and to become human is what the individual has been created for. And so, he believed that the path to divinity was through human contact. This approach to interpersonal connection is deeply spiritual, and probably too mushy for most. But his theory is also highly biological. Pinsky,…

Culture isn’t who we are, it’s who we were taught to be. It’s a story. One that we have all accepted and agreed to tell, whether we realize it or not. This phenomenon makes culture the most enormous force of persuasion that exists in the world. And that’s not necessarily a good thing. Because if you look back to the past fifty years, our culture has completely indoctrinated people…