When I’m delivering workshops I like to mess with enlighten the participants by asking two key questions: #1. What is one activity you love to do—that thing that sweeps you off your feet, makes you feel fully engaged and alive, makes you lose track of time and self-consciousness (a la flow)? #2. When was the...

“Trooper Douglas Dolan is lucky to be alive” was the lead-in to a news article which went on to explain DJ Dolan’s ordeal while apprehending a routine motor vehicle stop gone awry. More than awry: DJ was dragged by the suspect’s vehicle, assaulted after he hoisted himself up and into the car (total Tom Cruise...

You know that quote by William Arthur Ward that goes, “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it”? We’re going to bastardize it a bit by swapping out the “feeling gratitude” part. Here, let’s try it on for size: “Having pretty much any kind of good thought about...

Sound the alarm bells, Happy Smurf. You might be shooting yourself in the foot with your daydreams about the life you long to live . . . because fantasizing about the things you want to happen can fizzle the sizzle of the dreams. [Here is where I would insert an illustration of a wet blanket...

I met Derek Weaver at a workshop I delivered called “How Many Mondays Do You Have Left,” and we chatted afterwards about how he spent the first part of his career working for the largest funeral service provider in the world. (As a death enthusiast that absolutely caught my attention.) Derek prepared thousands of dead...

Okay, here’s a warmup to the real test you came here for: When you see this glass, what comes to mind? A) The glass looks half full. B) The glass looks half empty. C) Where’s the mixer? And the ice? I don’t like my vodka straight up like that. D) What kind of animal spilled...

I am all too pleased to present to you what might be my most shit-disturbing-but-profound question yet. This one’s worth the agitation, friendo. Which scenario would you rather? Calculus-wise, every option in the chart above “scores” the same (150 possible “points”), but the implications are vastly different. There isn’t a right or wrong answer (okay...

How would your life be different if you knew the exact date and time you were going to die? Would you prefer to know, or would you prefer it to be like it is today—a total live-or-die crap shoot every day you wake up not dead yet? For many of us it’s the unpredictability of...

Just because school’s out for summer, it doesn’t mean pop quizzes are on vacation, too. As they say, if you’re not green and growing, it means you’re ripe and rotting, right?! You shall not rot on my watch this summer (more than you already are, you slowly decaying corpse-in-the-making, you). Memento mori, baby!! So let’s...

First of all, no one really knows what equanimity is, so let me save you from having to Google it: Equanimity is defined by contemplative science researchers as “an even-minded mental state or dispositional tendency toward all experiences or objects, regardless of their affective valence (pleasant, unpleasant or neutral) or source.” Said less science-ey, it’s...

Me: “I have an amazing idea! How about we do a total TV detox for a month? Like, give it up completely?” The Husband: (*conspicuous silence*) The first offer in a negotiation is rarely accepted. So we agreed on a Monday-to-Thursday no-TV-for-one-month life together, which was a Big Household Decision. We are TV (and movie)...

Don’t you love happiness hacks? Cheap ‘n cheerful . . . down ‘n dirty . . . easy peasy lemon squeezy . . . any relatively effortless way to feel happier: count us in, right? Life—in addition to being annoyingly temporary (had to throw that one in there!)—is unpredictable and fickle. We wouldn’t be wrong...