March 26, 2024
This article was inspired by the work of Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hahn’s book, Work: How to Find Joy and Meaning Each Hour of the Day. For those of you unfamiliar with the work of Thich Nhat Hanh, the Zen master, poet, peace and human rights activist was exiled from his homeland of Vietnam in 1966. His work, based on […]
February 14, 2024
I continue to be surprised by the lack of understanding we have about what we humans need to thrive. Of course, we know this. Modern psychology has studied and confirmed that without social connection, humans simply cannot thrive, They may, in certain cases, even die. Yet, many of us do not live as if we truly know this. This, I’ve […]
January 1, 2024
When was the last time you experienced joy? To answer the question it helps to remember what joy feels like in your body. Like all other emotions, joy has its own unique biological signature. We memorize emotions in our bodies. With those emotions we experience less often, we may have to work a little harder to recall how they felt. […]
November 14, 2023
Every person grows up carrying a narrative about who they are. Most of that story is formed early in childhood with new chapters added to include adolescence and experiences as adults. The childhood stories are mostly formed by our parents and significant care-givers’ narratives about who they think we are. Mom says, “Tom’s a dreamer and very creative.” Dad says, […]
October 17, 2023
There’s lots of compelling information that has emerged from neuroscience about compassion. That’s good news because, frankly, we need it. You see, the really good news is that we’re hard-wired for compassion. Speaking at a conference in Telluride, Colorado, The Science of Compassion: Origins, Measures and Interventions, sponsored by Stanford University Medical School’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research, Stephen Porges, Ph.D. presented […]
September 19, 2023
“Anger can be a wonderful wake up call to help you to understand what you need and what you value.” Thich Nhat Hahn For seven years I regularly facilitated seminars on conflict resolution throughout the US. Most of the group participants wanted answers to problems they saw as the source of their conflict. Usually this had to do with fixing […]
May 20, 2023
“The voice in the head tells a story that the body believes in and reacts to. Those reactions are the emotions. The emotions, in turn, feed the energy back to the thoughts that created the emotion in the first place. This is the vicious circle between unexamined thoughts and emotions, giving rise to emotional thinking and emotional story-making.” Eckhart […]
May 2, 2023
Most people don’t respond positively to feedback (a.k.a criticism). The expanding knowledge we have about how the brain works is helping us to understand why. Even under the BEST of circumstances, many of us find ourselves recoiling in response to hearing what others think about us. Our receptivity depends on context, relationships and circumstances – but the greatest factor is […]