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Cooke famously sang that change was gonna come.  We just didn’t realize it would come so suddenly.  That’s often how change works. Everything is gradual until it falls off a cliff. Our world is at a standstill, and then all of the sudden, it’s not.  Sociologists would call this a point of instability. It’s when life gives us no choice but to rapidly and dramatically change our behavior.  Illness…

Our loss of innocence can come from any source of heartbreak. And when it happens, when we are a young person standing at the threshold of a new maturity, there is a shedding of an outdated pair of eyes and ears. Our comprehension of the world is revolutionized.  The change or loss or disappointment pulls the rug out from under us, and all of the sudden, we are not…

Every day, we are tempted to binge on negativity.  It is our society’s most seductive attention magnet. Whether it comes through our screens, in our ear buds, on physical media, our out of the mouths of other people, it has grown more and more difficult to see past the downpour of pessimistic thoughts.  According to the definitive study on negativity bias from a psychophysiology journey, participants would not only…

My old startup founder had a mantra for all our company leaders: Be soft on the person, hard on the problem.  Which is wonderful advice in the world of management, but it’s also profoundly useful in the conversation we have inside our heads.  Because that’s leadership too. How we choose to be with ourselves. Even when nobody is watching. Especially when nobody else is watching. This determines how we…

Human beings prefer that our thoughts and feelings are in in harmony with each other at all times.  It makes us feel safe, controlled, competent and satisfied in this chaotic chamber of horrors called life.  That’s why, when our inner planets fail to align, we go to great lengths to restore the balance. The internal inconsistency is too psychologically uncomfortable.  Unfortunately, the cash value of cognitive dissonance rarely pays…

There is a great saying the recovery community.  Addicts are like pickles, they can never become cucumbers again.  Meaning, certain predilections are never out of our lives completely. We take ourselves with us everywhere we go. Genetics combined with environment says that any one of us could relapse into old patterns that diminish what we are in our best moments.  Here is a morbid way to think about it. …

The most exciting part of poker is anytime someone goes all in.  This is a type of bet where the player commits his entire stack of chips. Even if it’s not a huge amount of money. Not the point. What matters is the commitment. The courageous, binary decision to jump into this situation unreservedly involved, without equivocation.  Because in poker, there is no fence. You’re either in or you’re…

Being the arbiter of moral rectitude is very rarely welcomed.  In fact, it’s usually met with ungenerous opposition.  Like when you go out to eat with a group of friends or colleagues, and upon ordering something healthy, all the sudden you get the chorus of eye rolls. People joke about how you are make everyone else feel bad. They make passive aggressive and backhanded remarks about your conscious choices….

During the coronavirus pandemic, nametags started to take on new meaning.  Particularly in hospitals. Doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals are legally required to keep their distance, interacting with patients only under excessive layers of protective equipment.  My friends who worked in medicine told me it made them feel deeply disconnected. But certain healthcare workers found clever ways to help patients feel less alone and more joyful.  Scripps hospital…

According to the national coalition against domestic violence, an average of twenty people are physically abused by intimate partners every minute.  It’s a sad and terrifying reality of modern relationships.  And the worst part is, abusers are highly skilled at shifting the blame for their toxic behavior. They are experts at finding excuses to dodge any and all responsibility.  Consider several of the most common abuse justifications.  It wasn’t…