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Share the essence of the person who is underneath
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…
It was abuse, but you thought it was just the way that they loved
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…
Faith wanders and shakes hands with the craziness
Everything seems inevitable and logical in retrospect. But for now, reason is being invaded by history. Tumbling down a fantastic realm where logic and reason no longer applied, there seems to be no objective moral framework in the unforgiving chaos of this absurd universe. This is difficult for our primitive egos to comprehend. Because nobody wants to admit they’ve seen something that their education or experience can’t explain. That…
We must remember that we are okay
We must remember that we are okay. Vandijk’s research on calming the emotional storm identifies a subtle phenomenon called an invalidating environment. It’s where we are taught that our emotions are wrong inappropriate or not okay. The underlying message is to not feel what we are feeling. Like the hyper critical parent who offers an infuriating nonstop commentary on our shortcomings. Or the insensitive teacher who tells us that getting angry is…
Making decisions is hard, living with them is a harder
My mentor once gave me a priceless piece of business advice. Once you’ve sold something, don’t buy it back. Just get your money and walk away. Resist the urge to justify the purchase, over explain the product or excessively thank the customer. Be grateful for the sale and go make another one. It’s not only great advice for making sales, but also for making decisions. Because for many people,…
Spending my life swimming in chemical soup.
Sobriety is less about the act of consumption and more about the command of oneself. It’s about the independence from craving. Not allowing things to consume us, so to speak. Public health agencies have done a helpful job of reframing the official definition of sobriety. They refer to it as the achievement and maintenance of control over, and equilibrium in, our life in general. Interestingly enough, they mention that…
Begin the unnecessarily slow moving dipping mechanism
Years ago, a popular national news show wanted to feature me as a human interest story on their upcoming episode about luck. They asked if they could follow me around for a day to see how wearing a nametag helped open doors with strangers, create connections and stack the cards in my favor. Sounds fun, so let’s do it. But when the crew showed up at my apartment, the…
Situations where we feel tempted to waste our energy
Recentresearchfrom a federal library found that we are a shockingly wasteful country. The study showed that more than sixty percent of the energy that flows through our economy is ultimately wasted. Between fuel inputs such as coal and natural gas, and the end use energy consumption for residential, industrial and transportation purposes, less than half of that fuel was constructively used at the end of the day. One data…
It takes two years just find out who’s full of shit
Because you are a person, some things are very difficult not to take personally. Events feel like unique misfortunes picked out especially for us. How could that company have fired me? Why did my favorite client leave? Where does that horse get off walking away from me like that? But despite the cinematic sense of karmic justice that we were taught to believe in when we were young, one…
The longing will not be tranquilized
My doctor friend once gave me a warning that sent a corkscrew of chill through the hollows of my spine: The worst opiate out there is the one you like. Meaning, whatever substance allows us to escape from our anxieties, whatever chemical creates a barrier that shields us from the sharp edges of reality, legal or illegal, can be a very dangerous thing. At the very least, it can…
