Is joy even possible?

Over 350 million people worldwide battle depression. According to the World Health Organization, depressive disorders have increasingly impacted adolescents in particular over the past decade. It not only affects individuals, but entire systems with an estimated cost on the global economy reaching around 1 trillion […]

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Strength over fear

When your strength is stronger than your fear, you move mountains. Courage is not measured by the actual number of wins you have in life. It is measured by the number of times you get up when you have fallen. It is a mark of […]

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Taking heart in a heartless world

The heart is a vast and beautiful place. We all have one. And sometimes we choose to dwell there. It is mystical. It is magical. It is the source of all life. The moments we meet another heart-to-heart, we can feel it with every fiber […]

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Oxygen mask first

A part of me is dying. Perhaps it has to do with my son choosing to live in the United States for a year or my 50th birthday careening towards me in ten months. Or that my nearly grown daughter doesn’t need me nearly as […]

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Cultivating Gratitude

Have you ever noticed that you can’t feel gratitude and misery at the same time? And that gratitude, once unleashed, has an overpowering effect on pretty much everything else? That you start to see things you didn’t have eyes to see before you let thankfulness […]

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Slow Culture, Fast World

The honeymoon is over. The bubble has popped. Reality slammed me in the face at 6 am this morning. That tender space of suspending thinking, in which you float between the time you return from vacation and the return to the day-to-day, is filled with wonder. Your […]

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Sleep on It

Sleep is essential, yet many of us don’t get the kind of quality sleep we need to be at our best. Since we spend one-third of our lives on a mattress, wouldn’t it make sense to get a good one? My life partner got a […]

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Silencing the Hum of Fear

The subconscious mind can do a real number on us. Humming just beneath the surface of things, it can haunt, taunt and tattle-tale on us in ways we don’t even realize. That is, until we calm it with a visualization exercise or meditation. Yesterday a […]

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Bad Choices, Good People

Sometimes it takes a series of really bad choices to finally make the right ones. But we can’t even know we’ve made bad decisions until we take a moment to step back and look at what we are actually doing — and why. Even when […]

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How to Thrive, Not Just Survive

It is as if Arianna Huffington took off her high heels and climbed into my head. For the past week I have devoured her latest book, Thrive. It is not as if she says anything new, but reading her book is like getting a whole […]

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