Journal

Reconnecting, Part 1

What’s been going on? The last time I posted here was during the first wave of COVID-19. But those of you who are signed up for my newsletter know that I didn’t stop working behind the scenes. One of the main thing I did during this period was the creation and launch...

Does how we interpret things shape our experiences?

…there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. — William Shakespeare, Hamlet One day, a farmer’s only horse ran away. His neighbors came over to console him, saying, “We are so very sorry, this is horrible news! You must feel angry and sad.” The...

What gets in the way of your happiness?

Often it’s easier to answer questions about what we don’t want than what we do want, and there is a good reason for that. It’s called the negativity bias. 'Negativity bias' refers to our hard-wired tendency to “attend to, learn from, and use negative information far...

What is the cause of unhappiness?

If happiness protects us from illness, wouldn't everybody do it? It's happiness after all! Who would reject it? Anthony de Mello, an Indian Jesuit priest and psychotherapist, might be able to help us understand. He wrote, “There is only one cause of unhappiness: the...

Life after COVID-19?

I’m working on the assumption that most of us are going to survive COVID-19. If that’s the case where might we focus our attention as we step into the future? Dr. Ruut Veenhoven, sociologist, pioneer and world authority on the scientific study of happiness from the...

Waking up to who you really are

What brings you here? I invited you to take a moment to pause and consider what brings you here. What is in your mind and heart and body that has caused you to stop here?  You might pause for 10 or 20 seconds to get a clear sense of what brings you here. What’s the...

Waking up to power

Waking up to power is amazing, fulfilling and challenging. It is amazing and fulfilling because when I am outside my element (and my power is almost always most evident when I'm outside my comfort zone) and I do something that I never though possible, I feel...

Waking up to all there is

Through my mindfulness practice I wake up to all there is to be known in my life. That sounds pretty amazing, right? But as long as I’ve been writing, I haven’t written about what mindfulness is. Let’s rectify that, shall we? Jon Kabat-Zinn famously defined...

Waking up to love

Let’s look at how one might be loved, be more loving and express love more deeply. Isn’t that what we all want? I’ll start by looking at one of the more challenging aspect of love, which I call the “stupid” argument. You know the ones where after it’s all over you...