Rather counterintuitive in a world that favors comfort, convenience, and sheer and utter pleasure is the idea that humans deteriorate without challenges and adversity placed on our bodies and minds. (Deterioration, to be clear, is not what we’re looking for while we still have Mondays left to live.) The hedonic pursuit of happiness, characterized by...
I once spent an 18-month stint in my corporate career as a customer service expert (or at least I pretended very hard to be one and fortunately had fun trying). In that role I espoused the virtues of the Net Promoter Score — which is the gold standard in customer experience metrics and also a...
How are you feeling right now? Let me guess: “fine”? You can do better than that, friend. Being able to accurately perceive your emotions (and also the feels of others) is an enormous component of emotional intelligence — something you might want to boost if you interact with humans in any part of your day,...
If you were dying, would you want to know it? According to research, you might not have a choice: for half the people who die each year, the medical community is able to solemnly deliver the “I’m sorry but you’re dying” news to the sick patient before they kick the bucket. For the other half...
Look at me over here, just assuming you want to become a centenarian. I should begin this little “how to” ditty by asking if you even want to live until 100? According to research from the Stanford Center on Longevity, 77% of Americans want to live to see their 100th birthday. That’s what we think when...
Okay, eager pupils, it’s time for a pop quiz about how comparison robs us of the warm and fuzzy feelings of aliveness! And because you’re on the other end of an invisible Wi-Fi radio wave, I won’t even know if you cheat. (I’m totally fine if you cheat.) Question 1: What would most people rather?...
Despite our best efforts to live astonishing, gleeful, downright picturesque and consistently perfect lives, sometimes we f*#k things up. Sometimes we make decisions that make us shake our heads and wonder what we were thinking when we said “cheers!” to that fifth shot of gin (not that I have any experience with that at all...
I started my career as a personal trainer (yes, it was all the way back in the 90s, and yes, that was approximately 125 years ago, and yes, I wore those swishy track suits) — which means I got a front row seat to the three-ring circus of Bonkers Human Behavior. Most of my clients wanted...
‘Tis the season to go looking for love, and probably in all the wrong places. You’ve been socially conditioned to have some kind of love transaction this second week of February, and with all due respect to the Hallmark executives, let’s forget about everyone else for a sec and focus the love light inwards. (You...
We had to put our little Ralphie cat down last week and I feel like I've been shot by a rifle. No, wait — a cannon — that’s a far more accurate metaphor. Cannonballs leave way bigger holes than piddly little rifle pellets, and the point I’m trying to make is that there’s a cavernous hole...
No self-respecting blog post about meaning starts without a quote from holocaust-surviving psychologist Victor Frankl (yes! the guy who wrote the most excellent Man’s Search for Meaning): “The question can no longer be ‘What can I expect from life?’ but can now only be ‘What does life expect of me? What task in life is waiting for me?’. I’ll...
My friend Bill (who hilariously calls himself a “free range chicken” after pseudo-retiring a few years ago) recently confided he’s feeling less curious these days. This was bothering him, and I get why. My curiosity has gotten crusty around the edges, too, because I’ve been living a smaller life within our Plague-riddled world. For a...
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