The gratitude you receive from others is a reflection of your genius.

Create a habit of noticing where and when appreciation comes to you in your life and work. Is it always in a particular realm? For example, care taking, solution finding, listening, creative thinking, beauty making? Gratitude is a...

The other day I was driving down the road feeling peaceful and happy. Life was good. All was right with the world. As I signaled to change lanes, the driver next to me wouldn't let me in, and impulsively, I reacted. I yelled sarcastically, "Thanks a lot!" Then I called...

Many interactions these days have a kind of bumper-car quality to them. At work, at home, on the telephone, via email: We sort of bounce off of each other while we exchange information, smile or frown, and move on. How often do we actually take the extra few seconds to...

How can we control thoughts? Can we remove thoughts from the mind?

There is no huge bank of thoughts within you. Thoughts are just going and going, one at a time, one at a time, one at a time. If you try to do anything with them,...

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...

My friend Marilyn recently adopted a beautiful cat, all white, with deep blue eyes. The cat loves to gaze at herself in the floor-length mirrors on Marilyn's closet doors. What does she see? Is she admiring her own beauty? Or is she fascinated by the sight of what she thinks...

Some people say we live in a "soulless" world, or they refer to a place as "having no soul." What does it mean to have "no soul"? What does it mean to have soul?

Some people are called "lost" souls, some are "old" souls and some look for a...

In the fall of 1999, I packed my tape recorder and traveled from my home outside Boston to visit Donaldson Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison outside Birmingham, Alabama. I was hoping to interview prisoners about their lives in prison and their experiences with meditation. I had heard that many of...

Are you addicted to technology? Can you go a week without the Internet, or even a day? The degree to which we find ourselves hungrily tapped into the constant flow of electrically-charged information gathering can be tested. Simply unplug. Then, note your responses.

I recently returned home after being gone...

There are those days, those times, those zones when no matter what you try, regardless where you turn, the answer eludes the grasp. Latitude and longitude fly out the window. A map is needed to restore faith in life. And this doesn't even begin to cover a mislaid sense of...

Memory improvement has been referred to as "one of the world's oldest professions." While the practice of revving up our recall has been around since ancient times, scientific evidence for the impact of such training on memory performance has not. Now, as baby boomers age into "senior moments" and the...

I had the pleasure of visiting William Broad at the Times today. He kindly gave me the tour, and showed me the Pulitzer wall, which he was on for a group prize in 1986. We even had some hang time in the...

Take stock: Who's on your bus-- who are you co-creating with? And how do they see the
world?

Now let's turn that around to get to your genius place: How do you see the world? This could be a complicated exercise, but pretend it's simple. Are you a...

A factor that distinguishes the doers from the non-doers is their level of etiquette. The way that a coaching client decides to conduct themselves, be that on a business or personal note, can determine the outcome of an assignment. This simple yet often neglected quality is the one thing that...

When I first moved to Calgary at 18 to pursue my Olympic dreams I had little need for a car. I had a bike and a small circle of destinations that made it relatively easy to get around. I was also student-athlete poor and had no money for an extravagant...

I have nothing against Hope Edelman or her beautiful, life-affirming book, Motherless Daughters. In fact, I'm grateful that she and those who have contributed to her groundbreaking work have comforted countless people. It's just that when my mother died and I was ceremoniously handed the thing, the best I could...

Were you one of the millions of people mesmerized by Oprah's series of web classes with spiritual master Eckhart Tolle exactly four years ago? I was recently reminded how thrilling it was to immerse myself in Tolle's A New Earth for those 10 weeks when I stumbled on the podcasts...

When I begin working with people with dysfunctional life inertias, I ask them what their needs and NEEDS! are. Most often, they are unable to describe either. Many people don't know what drives them to think, feel, and act in unhealthy ways. They also are so far out...