It would be great if stress were an exotic flu or an illness that needs a cure. It's our bad luck, though, that stress is far from exotic, and we know exactly how to fix it. This has allowed stress to have the perceived virulency of a hangnail. So under...

If fear was gold, we'd all be millionaires. Unfortunately, the payoff is mostly less than zero for this ancient and epidemic human emotion these days. The insecurity-mongers and safety police are working overtime to squelch the full expression of your life and whatever you would like to accomplish in the...

It's automatic for strangers at any American social setting -- right after "nice to meet you" and within the first two minutes of conversation or your citizenship is revoked. "What do you do?" It's a line that would be considered rude in many lands, but not here, where inquiring minds...

Of all the Steve Jobs products that have become essentials of daily life -- iMac to iPod to iPhone -- the one that may be most needed is echoing virally around the Web in the form of his Stanford commencement speech: iCan. His advice to "stay hungry, stay foolish," and...

Sometimes our closest friends can turn out to be not so friendly after all. That appears to be the case with an amigo few of us would ever question is a true bud and something we can hardly live without: comfort. The excessive pursuit of this commodity has been at...

The 2-week vacation used to be as normal a summer rite as barbecues and flip-flops. My dad would pile us into the station wagon, and we'd head out on windblown road trips (minus air conditioning) across the western U.S. Today, only 14 percent of Americans take two weeks...

Despite all the classes we take, degrees we get, documentaries we watch, most of us never get the word about a remedy as key to health and happiness as watching cholesterol or eating the right food. It's the invisible cure for a host of our problems, from stress to obesity...

More than one employee around the table had the same confession to make. Yes, they were taking their BlackBerrys to bed. Talk about an unrequited love. I wasn't surprised by this news at a work-life balance workshop I led. But it wasn't just connection addiction that was causing them to...

It's not easy to arrive in Los Angeles when you're on a flight to New York. Yet most of us are programmed in just this nonsensical way, to seek out happiness and life satisfaction by going in the exact opposite direction from what can produce it. No wonder we get...

As you trudge back to work after a brief glimpse of freedom beyond the office, your thoughts may turn to what it would feel like to have a few more days off from the grind. The end of May used to mark the unofficial start of vacation season, a time...

T-Bone Walker called it "Stormy Monday" in his electric blues masterpiece. ER physicians and hospital personnel know it as "Black Monday," the day of the week when more heart attack victims check in than any other day of the week. The prospect of another week of job pressures triggers a...

Consider a place where people feel guilty if they enjoyed themselves -- because they aren't getting anything done. Where people see free time as inferior to the un-free time of work and performance. How's that for chutzpah? It sounds absurd yet all too familiar, because that place is all around...

Adults have a few problems, as I'm sure you've noticed. Some three out of four doctor visits are stress-related. A doctor in Wisconsin told me that 90 percent of her patients have depleted adrenal glands, the result of the stress response pouring out adrenaline around the clock. American businesses squander...

It's in the adult handbook. You have to be in control, or look like you are, every waking moment, or pay the price in vulnerability or foolishness, risky and unseemly for grown-ups. As a result, many of us become experts at holding at bay the very things that unleash a...

Unlike aardvarks or ferrets, behavioral cues don't come with our biology. The Arctic tern knows exactly when to head south. We, however, are flying blind most of the time, since the instinct we follow is of the herd kind. Without built-in guidelines, researchers say we try to conform to what...

It's a little ironic that, as social media pushes the virtual friend count to new heights, the culture as a whole is getting ever more isolated. Researchers say that Americans have fewer close confidants outside family than ever before. One in four have no confidants at all. A study at...

The Declaration of Independence may guarantee the pursuit of happiness, but, as we all know, landing the prize is a different story. It's a winding road through the options we're given. Buying stuff, status, wealth, popularity, the refrigerator, the medicine cabinet -- all the standbys have failed to get the...

It's a vision problem that no laser surgery can cure, a hyperopia that keeps us from seeing the central source of happiness right next to us. That problem is called adulthood. Those who are afflicted with this condition have trouble focusing on nearby objects of amusement and the realm that...

If there's one thing the U.S. economy is booming in, it's the production of mass quantities of onlookers. We have become a nation of spectators, zoning into the glow of digital and high-def screens, cocooned in entertainment centers, oblivious to the sun in the sky, the breeze in the trees,...

No small amount of human duress is caused by a little hitch in the motivational equipment. What we want isn't necessarily what we need. What we want mostly is what's easy. We're wired for instant gratification, if not vegetation. If there's a product that can help you budge less, it's...