In education, we always try to emphasize the positive and encourage best practices; after all, promoting something good is more palatable and typically more effective than discouraging something bad.

It's sort of like what happens when you're driving on a road laced by potholes: It's best to look at...

Vienna, Austria, has a ball season, and waltzing the night away leaves you dizzy what with the glittering crystal, the flowing gowns and the seeming liquidity of time.

What I mean is, if you squint ever so slightly and open your mind, you can easily believe that you've...

Hotel lobbies are strange places, and the canned music they play can be even stranger. But, sometimes, the juxtaposition of place, time and melody combines and hits a target deep inside the heart triggering explosive thoughts.

Here in Belgrade, Americans are not uniformly welcomed. The vestiges of the United Nations-sanctioned...

The quality of your attention determines whether you are present and alert, or mentally and/or emotionally distracted.

If you're reading this article, you have the capacity to focus and sustain your attention at will; that's good. But if you just got distracted from these words, maybe by a sound...

Doctors can feel helpless and patients become hopeless when there are no more treatments to offer terminally ill patients. When people think there is nothing left to do, everyone suffers. But there is still living to be done even in the process of dying, and there are meaningful ways in...

Giving feedback is a whole lot easier than receiving it, especially about writing. So today, when I got an earful about what how to improve my blogs on mindfulness, I felt stressed. But then I remembered to practice what I preach. Put simply, I took a conscious breath, and then...

When a doctor is careless with words, a well-child visit can cause real pain. A well-child (or a well-teenager) visit is about looking holistically at the young person and drawing thoughtful conclusions that support health and wellbeing. The exam is supposed to build relationships and foster trust in the health-care...

Imagine the scene: a table with friends in a small Spanish restaurant tucked away in the corner of a Czech courtyard. An almost-empty pitcher of sangria, laughter and the sense of satisfaction that comes with eating more than enough (but not too much) paella. And then a plate loaded with...

Grief is a blue landscape, and last week, the loss of life in Benghazi forced us there. In the fog of war (and what happened was an act of war), the details emerge slowly as do the layers of response: denial, anger and grief. These are all variations of blue....

Isn't it strange that so many adults can't (or won't) use their mouths to inform teens about oral sex when many teens, themselves, are actually use their mouths to do it?

Now that CDC has released the most recent data on teen sexual activity, the lots of...

I just met a politician who walks her talk, and whose talk makes sense. What a concept. Actually, more than a concept, she's amazing. She's a real politician, in a real town, with clear vision.

Shelleen is running a political race in Sheridan, Wyoming. Today, the town was inundated by...

It must be something in the water, or the air, but people in Sheridan, Wyo. are consistently friendly in the most pleasant of ways. I haven't figured it out yet and keep thinking that maybe its only the handful of folks that we've met... but then we meet some more...

Monday was Memorial Day, officially a solemn time of remembrance and unofficially a national barbeque day. But memories inform every day, and so too does the importance of remembrance.

Although we've passed the official day of memorial, I'd like to share some thoughts to carry forward on warm summer...

You'd think you're in England here at the High Prairie Horse Show in Parker, Colorado. I mean, the raincoats, mud-splattered boots and low hanging slate-grey skies look awfully British to me.

But the accents here are all-American, the horses like listening to Country-Western radio in the barns and the...

When life rolls like waves, the mind can surf or sink. If you don't believe me, all you've got to do is go knee-deep in the ocean and see what happens. But, if you lack a handy beach, read on:

So there I was, wet to the knees. With my...

According to the calendar, we're supposed to be past April's showers and into the sunny month of May. At least that's the conventional wisdom regarding the weather, but not perhaps for the seasons of the heart. When it comes to our emotions, relationships and deepest desires, storms can break out...

You know how it goes: If you're searching for personal meaning -- in a fortune cookie, horoscope or even a HuffPost bog -- you're going to find it. The temptation is almost irresistible and the outcomes, well, they depend on whether you know when you are searching and what it...

According to my grandma, "A good romantic relationship takes effort, not work." How's that for a pearl of wisdom with terrifying implications?

The thing is, my grandma was right. Effort is a necessary part of nurturing a joyful relationship. Work, on the other hand, is not.

I mean, who...

Okay, so I've been looking at things all wrong and maybe you have too. Remember that metaphor of being a ship on the sea? You know, the single person in the small boat floating on that vast blue ocean? Still safe, but very vulnerable?

It's a conventional image of...

On Christmas morning, the stockings wait: full of messages and meaning. These were the gifts of our season:

Pomegranates: As with Persephone in the realm of Hades, for abundance joined with the recognition that all seasons change. And with, come times of light and dark, plentitude and scarcity, ease and...