I recently wrote a blog post about the importance of asking our good friends for what we really need. I received a lot of feedback, most of it expressing gratitude for being given permission to need and ask for a certain kind of undistracted attention from good friends. Many people...

Love is a language, and every one of us speaks our own personal dialect. There are infinite love languages co-existing on the planet and often we are in partnership with someone who speaks a radically different love language than our own heart's mother tongue. In such cases, we love each...

Nearly 100 years ago, Albert Einstein wrote the following: "I fear the day when technology will surpass our human interaction. We will have a generation of idiots."

As anyone who knows my blog knows, I also worry about what technology is doing to us as a species. And lately, I...

We all go through hard times now and again. And when the hard times come, we need good friends to help us through. I have been hearing a lot of stories about friendship lately, and it has gotten me thinking about what we really want and need from our friends,...

Anyone who has ever practiced mindfulness knows that there is something akin to a wild animal living inside each of us. We call that wild animal "mind." If you stop for just a minute, right now, and pay attention to what your mind is telling you, I am certain that...

Are you "shoulding" yourself to death? All day, every day, are you telling yourself what you "should" do? Have you forgotten what you even "want"? If you are like most people, the answer is "yes."

The "Should" List Best-Sellers:

You should be grateful to be alive.
You should...

Friendships change, and not always for the better. Sometimes we find that a friend with whom we have had a long and important relationship is no longer someone that we particularly like or enjoy being around. Perhaps the friend has changed and become someone different or perhaps we have changed,...

We all have people in our lives who have profoundly harmed us. Sometimes the situation with the other person has changed. You may have forgiven them and they may even have taken ownership and expressed remorse for their harmful actions. Other times, the same harmful behavior goes on with no...

Last week, I went to Friday night services at synagogue. Immediately following, and all week in fact, I have been aware of feeling profoundly human, grounded and well -- a part of something much larger than just myself. As is customary, the evening included singing, meditation and a talk by...

I check email more often than I should, and more often than I enjoy. I am not alone in this. I have clients and friends who check their email up to 100 times per day. Some, even more. Given the amount of pleasure that email actually delivers, it seems that...

Every year, I attend the last church service of the year. At the end of December, the minister asks us to write down all the things we want for the coming year. We then draft a letter to ourselves that we will receive a year later (sent back to us...

We talk a lot about self-care in this culture, but what does self-care really mean? For most people, self-care translates to getting a massage, taking a walk, eating lunch away from our desks, putting on our oxygen mask first. These are all valid self-caring activities, but a deeper level of...

How would you treat yourself if you were someone you loved? This is one of my favorite questions. It is not only instinctive to take good care of someone you love, but also to take good care of yourself. Unfortunately, we are trained to un-learn our loving instincts when it...

As someone who turns out several blogs each month, I am deeply grateful for the invention of the diner. It is at the diner -- a true laboratory for human behavior -- that I gather much of my material. This morning, eavesdropping again, I overheard the woman in the seat...

Watch the TEDTalk that inspired this post.

When I first heard Eric Whitacre talk about his virtual choir and its debut on YouTube, a virtual choir and the power of crowds, I got the chills. First, I was chilled by the music, Lux...

As many of you know, I have been a concerned critic on the topic of technology. Particularly, its effect on our ability to relate to each other and on consciousness in general. But today, in honor of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, I feel moved to express my gratitude for technology...

Nearly every time I am out with my nearly 2-year-old daughter, someone cheerfully instructs me to "Enjoy the time with her now because it goes so fast." The same was true and continues to be true with my 9-year-old. I guess you could say that I have been listening to...

I am a runner -- a reluctant runner. After nearly three decades of pounding the streets, my runner's high has reached an all-time low, and unless I am filled to the brim with caffeine, I mostly grin and bear it and wait for my run to be over. And yet,...

Our lives are an endless search -- a search for something we call happiness. We continually gain it and then lose it, again and again. And yet, despite its inherently transitory nature, we continue trying to capture happiness, permanently, like a moth in a cage. Permanent happiness is the goal...

We want to be happy. Everyone, everywhere, is trying to find -- and hold onto -- happiness. We do everything we are supposed to do, follow the experts' advice, practice the techniques -- and still, more often than we should be (given the amount of effort we are putting in),...