Training the Mind to Find Happiness
"At first, I sat on a couch cushion in the middle of my living room, and meditated for 5 minutes using my kitchen timer. At the beginning, I experienced what the book referred to as a 'waterfall' of thoughts. Having never tried to focus my mind on something so simple as respiration, so many thoughts poured down on me: 'What am I going to have for lunch?' 'What if this doesn't work?' 'I should do a... posted on Feb 03 2012, 26,999 reads

5 Books on the Psychology of Love
"It's often said that every song, every poem, every novel, every painting ever created is in some way 'about' love. What this really means is that love is a central theme, an underlying preoccupation, in humanity's greatest works. But what exactly is love? How does its mechanism spur such poeticism, and how does it lodge itself in our minds, hearts and souls so completely, so stubbornly, as to per... posted on Jan 24 2012, 14,654 reads

What We Aren't Taught About Creative Thinking
"Creativity is paradoxical. To create, a person must have knowledge but forget the knowledge, must see unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder, must work hard but spend time doing nothing as information incubates, must create many ideas yet most of them are useless, must look at the same thing as everyone else, yet see something different, must desire success but embrace fa... posted on Jan 18 2012, 60,791 reads

How Vulnerability Can Be a Strength
The word vulnerable itself comes from the Latin 'vulnerare' which means 'to wound', and so at the root of vulnerability is our own sense of wounded-ness. To be authentic in a moment in which we feel wounded, we have to honestly acknowledge the places where we feel hurt and then muster up the strength to just be with the pain. If we can embrace this vulnerability, we can fully accept the discomfort... posted on Jan 13 2012, 30,208 reads

Benefits of Rising Early -- and How to Do It
"Recently, reader Rob asked me about my habit of waking at 4:30 a.m. each day, and asked me to write about the health benefits of rising early, which I thought was an excellent question. Unfortunately, there are none, that I know of. However, there are a ton of other great benefits. Now, let me first say that if you are a night owl, and that works for you, I think that's great. There's no reason t... posted on Jan 08 2012, 168,780 reads

The Leadership Genius of Bob the Builder
Most of us believe in positive self-talk. "I can achieve anything," we mouth to the mirror in the morning. We believe we'll do better if we banish doubts about our ability or our strategy and instead muster an inner voice that affirms our awesomeness. But not Bob the Builder. You might not realise it, but the overall-clad, stop-motion animated construction executive -- who debuted on CBBC in 1999 ... posted on Jan 07 2012, 7,201 reads

Be Healthy, Be Compassionate
The Dalai Lama has been telling us for years that it would make us happy, but he never said it would make us healthy, too. Maybe the Dalai Lama knew all along or maybe he's just finding out like the rest of us, but science is starting to catch up with a couple millennia of spiritual thought. In recent years, the investigation of compassion has moved beyond theology and philosophy to embrace a wide... posted on Jan 05 2012, 7,739 reads

The Three Building Blocks of Virtue
"Depending on what you paid attention to in school, you might remember Confucius by the Silver Rule ("Do not do to others..."), his exotic concepts (e.g., filial piety), or a series of grammar-challenged jokes ("Confucius say..."). Confucius did have a lot to say, but if there is one principle that runs through his philosophy, it's that personal virtue is the way to the good life and the good soci... posted on Dec 21 2011, 16,242 reads

Stepping Out of the "Should" Trap
"'I should make more money. I should lose weight. I should volunteer more often.' In saying 'should' so often, I found myself feeling trapped by a sense of obligation and expectation. I felt this vague pressure to conform to external standards, to be someone or do something. It felt like just being me wasn't okay. I felt pushed to follow a particular path, behave in specific ways, and believe cert... posted on Dec 14 2011, 39,413 reads

How Doctors Die
"In his last few months of life after discovering that lung cancer had spread into his brain, my older cousin Torch went to Disneyland for the first time, ate his favorite foods, had no serious pain, and remained high-spirited. Torch wasn't a doctor, but like many doctors who have access to medical care when diagnosed with a fatal disease, he chose state of the art end-of-life care: death with dig... posted on Dec 13 2011, 0 reads