A life of one’s own Sound familiar? A Life of One’s Own? Maybe you’re thinking of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, as was I until I learned more about a book published in the 1930’s. I’d never heard of Marion Milner, a British psychoanalyst and writer who embarked on a seven year experiment in […]
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How to avoid the amygdala hijack The amygdala hijack. Right. Avoiding it sounds like something we need to do but why is that exactly? It’s a cool phrase coined by Daniel Goleman in his 1996 book Emotional Intelligence: Why It can Matter More Than IQ. And describes the eruption that occurs when someone steps on
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Are you living your life or someone else’s? Ever asked yourself that question? Silly question? And thinking it impossible to live another’s life? Humor me. For just a few minutes, please. From childhood, we learn by mimicking, listening, reading, studying the words and actions of others. We learn too from experimenting with tools, ideas and attitudes:
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“Love: I know nothing about it.” My statement was in reply to a priest who had asked if anything was wrong. Mass had ended and there I sat, alone in the big, cold New England Catholic Church. Staring at the quintessence of agony: the crucified Christ. Instead of coming to console with words or presence,
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The pressure of reality: What a wonderfully powerful phrase. And connecting the words of poet Wallace Stevens to the ‘tyranny’ of the omniscient, ubiquitous 24/7 news is brilliant. Let me explain. Recently, a good friend asked my opinion about politics. He had a list: I told him that I could answer none of his questions
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Got a minute? To figure out out what to do with the rest of your life? It shouldn’t be difficult, right? And yet, we know scores of people who feel trapped in a dead-end job or loveless marriage or say they have no reason to get out of bed in the mornings. Keep reading and
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If you are unhappy Do an online search of the most popular topics for blog posts and you’ll find happiness to be among the top ten. But that isn’t the way to conceive of happiness. We need to change our way of thinking about happiness by coming at it through the back door and talk
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The west ablaze-with wildflowers. The wildflowers in California are ablaze with wildflowers, not with wildfires but flowers. The blooms along the west coast are so intense they can be seen from space! But the long drought is also over in the nearby high desert of the Pinion mountains of northern Nevada. Around seven on Friday morning,
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Overcoming anger: the final spiritual struggle We feel it everywhere: Anger. Whether a seething whisper or bellowing roar, resentment, anger, even rage, feels like the fuel of this brand new year as the second decade of the twenty-first century heads south. The source is anyone’s claim. An endless laundry list of injustice, victims and causes.
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The ambiguity of talent We use the word talent to connote skill or expertise. Often, we mean an individual with intrinsic aptitudes toward a thing. Whether it be athletics or mathematics, it’s someone with unusual ability. Organizational recruiters look for specific aptitudes in potential employees. We perceive these capacities as our own, as our property
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