Ah, Jan. 1, the new beginning and a chance to finally get it right this year. Or is it?

Perhaps it is the end of the beginning. When we began as a nation, we were full of hope and idealism. We believed that every person could thrive and prosper if...

I have a friend who is really upset because she feels she was pressured into a particularly large purchase and not appreciated afterwards. It occurs to me that this could be a concern for many single women, especially as they grow older. We read daily of various scams to help...

As long as I can remember, people have been telling me to relax, enjoy the moment, smell the roses and just take it easy -- to live life one day at a time. That's a challenge when we're younger, when we have many goals and not a lot of history...

I am 67-years-old. And I am an Elder to many in my various "networks."

Not many people in this day and age are willing to make such a declaration about their age... or are proud to be recognized as elders outside their communities. The word elder tends to be automatically...

I just finished reading a really good "how-to" book by Russell Bishop called "Workarounds That Work: How to Conquer Anything That Stands in Your Way at Work." This book is today's best guide for having our work lives work.

Although I am not generally a fan of "how-to"...

We've been assaulted lately by political pundits and statisticians telling us what will happen this week. It is easy to roll over and assume they know what they are talking about. So why bother to vote at all? Just sit back and watch the process on TV. This is a...

Stephanie Chen, a writer for CNN, recently published "No Retirement for These Older Folks, Just Work" about the fact that more and more people have to keep working well beyond their 'retirement age.' For some, this is purely a function of economic necessity. For others, it is...

Someone said to me in a meeting yesterday that there are a billion blogs. The number seemed high, so I did what we all do these days. I went to Google and in about 30 seconds of looking at "How many blogs are there," I was assured there are closer...

My teacher and friend Dr. Fernando Flores was a candidate for the Presidency of Chile. In one of his speeches, he declared, "We don't have an economic problem so much as we have a spiritual one... we've forgotten who we are... we lack a vision and purpose for our nation."...

When I was growing up, you needed to be master the 3 'Rs' (Reading, Writing and Arithmetic) in order to be educated. Today we need to master a new 3 set of 'Rs': Rights, Rewards and Responsibilities.

When I first started traveling to other countries in the 1970s, the...

I read an article recently describing what can only be described as a 'feeding frenzy' over the name and legacy of Nelson Mandela--one of the great leaders of our generation. This isn't different from the kind of greedy infighting between family, friends and constituents that happens far too...

It seems to me that there are three fundamental relationships that we all share as human beings: 1) our relationship with ourselves and other people, 2) our relationship with our circumstances and 3) our relationship with time. When we are inflexible or stuck in habitual ways of being in any...

The Fourth of July is a uniquely American holiday. This weekend, I felt a little bit like I was a part of a Bill Geist segment on small town celebrations on CBS's Sunday Morning show. My father is a World War II veteran. He joined the Army Air Corps in...

Do you know that terrible sinking feeling when something really bad happens that you didn't expect--something that you know will have a major and probably permanently negative impact on your life and the lives of those you love--and there is nothing you can do about it?

Many of us have...

I was playing a trivia game and had to answer what the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are. I got three out of four, but had to go to go to Wikipedia to get them all: War, Famine, Conquest, and Death. These traditional Biblical symbols mark the 'end of time,'...

Jerry Mander is a kind of technology prophet. As an ex-advertising guru he 'got religion' and in 1977 began to herald the dangers of technology in Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. In his 1992 book, In the Absence of the Sacred, he shows how the introduction...

I cannot remember having experienced or even having read about a time when there have been so many "extremes" co-existing in terms of political points of view and ways of understanding the world. All seem to simultaneously have the quality of being both 'life threatening' AND intractable. Whether we're discussing...

We're all witnessing the horrifying disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Most of us are running the gauntlet of emotions from sadness to anger. There is a lot of handwringing as the Gulf Coast girds itself for yet another devastating blow. It is not clear if this will be worse...

Being alive at any time is preferable to the alternative. However, as the years go by, I am increasingly appreciative of the extraordinary time in which we are living. I don't mean this as some sort of a "Pollyanna" platitude, but as a serious reflection on our world and who...

The older I am, the more I reflect on the aphorisms all around us and wonder why it is so difficult to accept and live with this obvious wisdom. Robert Fulghum memorialized many of them in his bestseller All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten....