is the sunshine of life — the quiet radiance that makes our lives not only livable but worth living. (This is why we must use the utmost care in how we wield the word friend.) In my own life, friendship has been the lifeline for my darkest hours of despair, the magnifying lens for my brightest joys, the quiet pulse-beat beneath the daily task of living. You can glean a great deal about a person from the constellation of friends around the gravitational pull of their personhood. “Whatever our degree of friends may be, we come more under their influence than we are aware,” the trailblazing astronomer Maria Mitchell observed as she contemplated how we... posted on Mar 27 2023 (5,314 reads)

anxiety as the avoidant thing you do after unrest stirs you, when you are trying to distract yourself or fix the physical discomfort in your body. Anxiety lets us fantasize that we can control outcomes—the futile “if only” and “what if’s” we often linger upon. Unfortunately, our anxiety lies to us, amplifying (in my experience) our uncomfortable bodily sensations. Fear, meanwhile, is the core emotion that warns us of immediate threat to life and limb, directing us to fight or flee. Quickened reactions, strengthened muscles, and enhanced lung capacity are lifesaving. In these instances, our physical reactions are not a problem; they a... posted on Apr 5 2023 (6,001 reads)

I was cleaning out my dresser, I found a small red, blue, and green hand-woven pouch, with a silver zipper on top. Ms. Macias, an English teacher I had in my Senior year of high school had given it to me fifteen years before I ever visited Guatemala, the country in which it was made. I remember sitting near Ms. Macias’ desk every day to the right side of the classroom, near my best friend Tia. We would both bombard her with questions about life and all that is important to a teenager. She would willingly engage in many conversations with us. One day she took out this little woven bag from her desk, walked over to my desk and asked if I liked it. I told her it was beautiful. ... posted on Dec 22 2014 (22,340 reads)

go and learning to follow my inner wisdom instead of an agenda. This is the common thread of my life. Until the age of 33, it was a bumpy road, full of painful  and deep potholes. I did not understand the meaning of all that was happening to me and felt lost. I fought tooth and nail for my right to exist in many ways. And ended up in burnout. There I lay at the bottom. In retrospect, the greatest gift of all in shuddering packaging. The chance for a new beginning. I had no choice but to move through the darkness. And asked myself for the first time in my life the questions: Who am I? Why am I here? Beyond al... posted on May 9 2023 (2,886 reads)

said no to editorial jobs on magazines, proper jobs that would have paid proper money because I knew that, attractive though they were, for me they would have been walking away from the mountain. And if those job offers had come along earlier I might have taken them, because they still would have been closer to the mountain than I was at the time. I learned to write by writing. I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, and to stop when it felt like work, which meant that life did not feel like work. Thirdly, When you start off, you have to deal with the problems of failure. You need to be thickskinned, to learn that not every project will survive. A freelance life,... posted on May 21 2023 (4,310 reads)

are part of the extended community here and have been shining lights for me for more than a decade now. Above all, warmest Congratulations to all of you in the Class of 2023. And to the families, friends, ancestors, and loved ones – near and far – who have set in motion and nurtured the ripples that allow us to be here today. It’s customary, I realize, for the person standing here to pretend or at least attempt to share with you stories of wisdom gleaned from a lifetime of experience. It is true that I have both toiled and found tremendous joy and reward in various material realms of our society – from public service, to the global financial and corpor... posted on May 30 2023 (2,658 reads)

1940, Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, a man who knew sin and failure like he knew the back of his hand, was living with his wife, Lois, in a tiny room at the Alcoholics Anonymous “clubhouse” in downtown Manhattan. Wilson was in despair, unsure of the state of his soul, of his role in life, and of the future of A.A. Just then, at his nadir, a Jesuit priest from S. Louis, Father Edward Dowling, who knew of Bill’s work, came calling…. —The Editors n chapter 4 of Not-God, Ernest Kurtz’s magisterial history of Alcoholics Anonymous, the author relates “how Bill Wilson habitually recalled that moment” when he met Father... posted on Aug 2 2023 (6,227 reads)

the restructuring and outsourcing of leadership development and learning initiatives. She lost her job. You might experience disappointment at work in many ways: a long-term project does not come to fruition, a new position opens up and you don’t get it, or your hard work does not pay off. Faced with a sense of loss and disappointment, we have no choice but to respond. In his famous work Man’s Search for Meaning, psychiatrist Viktor Frankl wrote that every person is questioned by life and can only answer to life by being responsible. In each of us, he proposed, we have a responsibility—or the ability to respond. Whether you are a leader who lost a job or an opportun... posted on Apr 3 2024 (3,484 reads)

be reached, granted you persevere through the middle part with full sincerity. After the longest day of the entire walk -- 38 kilometers -- my feet finally touch what the Romans thought was the end of the world. It’s been a long and interesting journey from St. Jean Pied de Port in France to Cape Finisterre, the western-most tip of Spain. One can never imagine the impact of such pilgrimages on our lives. Sitting on a rock by the lighthouse watching the most glorious sunset of my life, it seems like a perfect ending to a journey of 900 kilometers. There’s so much that I’ve learned from walking the thirty-seven days. I’ve learned that if you take the first ... posted on Jun 7 2011 (22,808 reads)

is something you can easily avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” ~Aristotle At the end of the day, when I feel completely exhausted, oftentimes it has nothing to do with all the things I’ve done. It’s not a consequence of juggling multiple responsibilities and projects. It’s not my body’s way of punishing me for becoming a late-life jogger after a period of cardiovascular laziness. It’s not even about getting too little sleep. When I’m exhausted, you can be sure I’ve bent over backwards trying to win everyone’s approval. I’ve obsessed over what people think of me, I’ve assigned ... posted on Jun 17 2011 (36,413 reads)

of both parties are met––which, fortunately, usually happens in share situations, according to Paul Zak––trust will naturally develop. This experience of trust leads to more personal happiness, according to John F. Helliwell, Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of British Columbia. Helliwell, who studies the social contexts of happiness, has found that “trustworthiness and trust…appear independently and robustly related to happiness and life satisfaction”, and as we experience trust in more domains in our lives, the happier we are. In fact, trust is so important for happiness that when researchers at the University of Cambridge... posted on May 21 2013 (26,063 reads)

freak accident involving a ceiling fan may have taken Su Meck’s memory of everything that happened for the first 22 years of her life, but it did not rob her of her determination.  Since the accident that left her with amnesia, the 45-year-old from Gaithersburg, Md., has had to relearn how to walk, talk, read, write and drive. But Meck, whose identity was once as a mother and homemaker, carved out a place for herself as a college student. She went from having been reduced to the mental capacity of a young child to graduating from Montgomery (Md.) College with honors in May, earning an associate degree. “It was very confusing to me because everybody was telling me who I w... posted on Oct 23 2011 (9,678 reads)

bill. The Seed Just as dramatic is the struggle for the seed. More than 1,000 independent seed companies were swallowed up by multinationals in the past four decades, so today just three—Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta—control about half the proprietary seed market worldwide. Fueling the consolidation were three Supreme Court rulings since 1980—including one in 2002, with an opinion written by former Monsanto attorney Clarence Thomas—making it possible to patent life forms, including seeds. And in 1992 the Food and Drug Administration released its policy on genetically modified organisms, claiming that “the agency is not aware of any information showing... posted on Nov 1 2011 (12,455 reads)

exam.  What would they find? My vet examined him and when he was done he told me that the ear infections were the worst he had ever seen and he was almost positive this old guy was totally deaf as a result.   We discussed all the heath issues and he asked me what I wanted to do. He told me that right now he couldn’t see anything wrong that couldn’t be treated and that he felt the dog could fully recover without too much stress or pain and have a good quality of life but he warned me that because of his advanced age, even if we decided to treat all his issues, this old boy may only have six months or maybe a year left and it was up to me.   He saw me hes... posted on Nov 19 2011 (105,427 reads)

all this material Sergio  had the idea of opening a museum to help him get some additional funding for the schools he was building in the communities, as well as to pay for the medicine he needed to treat his patients. Today, this museum is also a walk-in medical clinic, which is open every day except one. On Sundays, he visits the homes of those who are too incapacitated to come to his clinic. Don Sergio never stops, hence the title of a recently released documentary about his life, “El Andalon”, meaning, in Spanish, somebody who’s always on the go. The first time I peeked through the half-opened door of Don Sergio’s unadvertised museum/clinic,... posted on Jan 22 2012 (19,139 reads)

from the old directions and practicing the new way home, you strengthen a new neural pathway and the old neural pathway weakens. It's a good thing our brains can change, or we would still be pulling up to our childhood home.   Similar to physical skills like driving, the brain also forms neural pathways in learning and practicing emotional skills. Your emotional responses to experiences in your world are the result of well-worn neural pathways that developed over your lifetime. While our genes influence our temperament, research has demonstrated that our environment and our own mind can physically alter our brains and thus our emotional responses. This means that e... posted on Apr 23 2012 (134,871 reads)

the life of each and every one of us, there is a defining moment, one after which we know that our lives will never be the same.  For me, 9/11 was that moment.  I had by that time embarked in earnest on a search for self, leaving behind a lucrative marketing career, and committed to creating a life with meaning, one that went beyond material and professional success. Longing to trust my intuition over my logic, I followed what I believed were omens to Egypt. I meditated in many mosques and, one night, atop the Great Pyramid of Giza. I sat in the desert, and tried to listen to its whispers. I sensed a familiarity there that went beyond words, as if I had come home, and tha... posted on Jul 22 2012 (12,148 reads)

through the practice of mindfulness and meditation. Working with Zen masters, meditation teachers, psychologists and even a CEO, Meng created a seven-week personal growth program named -- what else -- Search Inside Yourself (SIY). Launched in 2007, Google has had more than 1,000 employees go through SIY with startling results. Participants rate the program at 4.7 on a five-point scale. Anecdotal feedback, among other comments, from many participants is that this program "changed my life." Meng then decided to open-source the SIY program by making its principles and components available to companies everywhere. He has written a book titled, Search Inside Yourself: ... posted on Jul 11 2012 (21,326 reads)

Kentucky. He splits his time between three quiet activities: 1) writing fiction, poetry, and essays, putting pen to paper (quite literally) in a tiny hut on the Kentucky river; 2) working his farm; and 3) engaging in non-violent civil disobedience supporting various humanitarian or agrarian causes. He has spoken out in his 76 years against wars, corporate corruption, nuclear power plants, the death penalty and abortion, coal mining practices, mountain top removal, and other issues of land and life. Although he doesn’t fit squarely into any one political category, just last month, President Obama awarded him the National Humanities medal. Berry is a truth-teller of the storytelling va... posted on Aug 15 2012 (14,446 reads)

go that finally allows us to be at peace. It is an acceptance of what happened along with a choice to stop dragging the unhappy past into the present. It is the experience of moving through blockages that keep us from being alive right now. It is for you way more than anyone else. Byron Katie says, “Things don’t happen to you; they happen for you.” When limiting stories are put to rest, we are able to see the lesson, the offering from them, that deeply enriches our life experience. Let’s clear up two misconceptions about forgiveness. + When you release your attention from your grievance story, you are not condoning the other’s behavior. ... posted on Jun 7 2021 (60,683 reads)