Eight days ago, fires began to tear through Los Angeles, driven by powerful winds. Tens of thousands of residents were ordered to evacuate, grabbing whatever few belongings they could with only minutes to spare. Members of my family evacuated one town, only to have to evacuate again from their presumed safe location. Entire communities were […]

Do you find yourself trying to figure out why experiences have happened to you, why certain situations frighten you, or why certain inevitables (death and taxes, as they say) exist? If so, welcome to the human race. Our minds are meaning-making machines. In addition, gaining a greater understanding of issues can be helpful, to an […]

If there’s one skill we all need in this unpredictable world, it’s resilience. Try as we might, and however hard we work, life will not always go our way. Some people respond to challenges and setbacks by bouncing back even higher, like a superball. Other people are more likely to land like a lead weight. […]

Sometimes we need to reboot our lives, much like restarting a frozen computer screen when nothing else will. When we’re feeling wired and tired, we can slow down long enough to ask ourselves, “Is this depression or depletion?” Frequently it’s the latter. When we’ve been burning the candle at both ends for too long, things […]

Do you often say to yourself things like, “This experience means that I’m not a good person”, “I’m not good at math”, or “I’m not worthy of my husband [or wife]”. If so, this is a clue that you may have a fixed mindset, in which you see things fatalistically, as if certain qualities of […]

Perhaps it’s those pesky migraine headaches, with the accompanying nausea, dizziness, and sensitivity to light, that threaten to incapacitate you on a regular or sporadic basis. Or maybe you struggle with chronic fatigue syndrome, a condition possibly connected with Epstein-Barr virus, that makes even taking a shower exhausting. Or you deal with rheumatic arthritis, an […]

As the New Year approaches, you may be evaluating what has transpired this year, and what you’d like to experience in the year to come. The following questions may help you to constructively and compassionately consider where you’ve progressed during this year, where possibly you’ve taken some unexpected or unhelpful detours, and where you’d like […]

There can often be a big gap between having good intentions and taking the associated steps to transform these intentions into action. We can get tripped up by not feeling like making a healthy breakfast (rather than eating fast food), going to the gym (rather than sleeping in), nor searching for a job (rather than […]

How do you think your life would change if you had absolute faith that some all-loving and all-wise being could and was managing all of your problems? You’d probably feel a lot less stressed, for starters. You might sleep better at night, be more energized during the day, and be less distracted and thus better […]

Granted – it can feel reassuring to try and determine a reason why we or other people behave in certain ways. However, just having insight and knowing (or thinking that we know) the reason underlying people’s motivations does not always lead to taking effective action regarding the situation. While, to quote Socrates, “The unexamined life […]