For a long time, I’ve strived to make my home a sanctuary. I want it to be a safe place, free from chaos and aggravation. In my ideal world, you wouldn’t hear a jackhammer, music from a neighbor, car alarms, or any of the other issues that go along with high-density living. Many years [...]
2022
For a long time, I considered myself safe only if there was no presence of danger. That makes sense if you look up the word “safe” and “safety” in the dictionary. Merriam-Webster defines safe as “secure from threat of danger, harm, or loss.” That’s how I’ve tried to live my life: not running with scissors, [...]
Lately, I’m struggling to accept reality. I don’t mean things like the Earth being round, I mean the reality of my life. For instance, a client is one month late on a payment. I haven’t heard a peep despite the repeated telephone calls and emails I’ve sent. Every day I check my bank account [...]
All week the topic of self-compassion versus self-esteem has come up in conversation with friends. I learned recently that what I thought was self-compassion is actually self-esteem and the two are very different! That matters because self-compassion is the trait that gives us more motivation, more grit, better health, and greater happiness, according to [...]
Someone asked me recently, what do I care what Elon Musk does with his money? To start with, why shouldn’t I care? We live in a society that pretends we’re not all connected. That what one person does somehow has no effect on anyone else. Want to own a newspaper company? Sure, go ahead! [...]
This post was originally published in July 2017. The other week I read an interesting philosophical treatise about the structure of our universe, which is an oval. We are made up of atoms with electrons moving around a nucleus. On a larger scale, the Earth is the nucleus and the moon is moving around [...]
I had an interesting dream the other night. I was on a spaceship and due to a setting, some people saw an illusion (luxury furniture, plush rugs, a tidy space) while others saw reality (cheap furniture, threadbare rugs, a mess). It was like a movie scene that magically changes an Ikea chair into an [...]
Sometimes I have temporary amnesia in that I forget how much can change in a day, an hour, an instant. If I feel blue, I think I’ll always feel blue. If I feel happy, I think I’ll always feel happy. I pretend a state of being is permanent when in reality, it’s anything but. [...]
As you’ve likely heard, the first-ever Amazon labor union was formed on Friday. What I love about this story is the David versus Goliath aspect. I can think of no better representation of a modern-day Goliath than Amazon. After all, Amazon accounts for more than 40% of ecommerce, according to emarketer.com. The next highest [...]
I had a humbling experience on Friday. While listening to my new favorite podcast, “The Happiness Lab,” the host Dr. Laurie Santos discussed inattentional blindness, or the inability to perceive objects if we’re not paying attention to them. She ran an experiment with her Yale students where she showed them a video of people [...]
