After a long job-seeking rejection streak, one of organizational psychologist Robert Cialdini’s clients started asking one simple question at the beginning of a job interview which immediately ended his rejection streak. This person went on to get better jobs in his next three interviews by […]
I once knew a couple who took stock of their marriage every year to decide if they were going to renew the contract. There is something ghastly about undergoing an annual performance review of your love, but it does speak to the need to ward […]
“There’s an old saw that goes something like this: It used to be that a happy man just had to make a hundred bucks more than his brother-in-law. Now because of social media, we have to compare ourselves to literally everyone. So that’s fun.” That’s […]
Sometimes we get so tangled up in our mind we have a hard time seeing clearly — being able to see where we are — which is why this poem by a young Japanese schoolboy* is so startling: In the middle of Japan, surrounded byThe […]
Several lifetimes ago I moved to Washington, DC and married a man who made it a habit to regularly visit the Air & Space Museum. On his way in and on his way back out he would touch the moon rock on display at the […]
In the middle of the day in a town square in Sabadell, Catalonia, a single cellist wearing a full tuxedo with tails begins playing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. Soon another cellist comes along and joins in as people milling around the square begin to take […]
We all want to feel alive and feel the vitality of life coursing through us but lately my hands have made me aware of the very opposite, aware of vitality slipping away. Lately, these hands have become a big problem in my life. I’ve got […]
Philip Henderson, though I don’t know you, there were apparently a great many things I needed to tell you about myself. To you, I was an unknown middle-aged woman who showed up in your driveway early one Saturday morning while you stood outside enjoying a […]
I’ve never understood how we (I’m acting like I’m not the only one) don’t always know what we’re thinking. For instance, how is it that I woke up in such a shroud of darkness the other day, wore that mood all day long like a […]
Something in my mind said “Plum,” so I circled back home on my green Schwinn 10-speed once again. I’d already done this 7, 8, 9 times. It was a beautiful summer afternoon, not too hot for an aimless cruise around town, but those plums were […]
Sometimes when I go about trying to be present, I wonder if I might be corrupting — just a wee bit — the actual living of my life with all that deliberate, effortful awareness. The extra awareness can almost make it feel like I’ve created […]
There is nothing like the Grand Canyon to make you feel like a speck in time. I hadn’t foreseen the irony of that as my partner and I planned a trip to the Grand Canyon to celebrate the 60 years we have each been on […]
Be cool. 