It’s a well-established truism that we are our own worst enemies. We hold ourselves to standards we would never expect our friends and families to uphold. How much advice do we dole out, but fail to take for ourselves? For example, we tell our friends to love their bodies, flaws and all, yet chastise our own […]
Mudita
Mudita. Let’s talk about mudita. We NEED to talk about mudita. MUDITA is the joy that comes from delighting in other people’s well-being, successes and good fortune. It is pure joy unadulterated by self-interest. In the age of social media trolling and cut-throat rat race competition, we need more mudita. Trolling, as you may know, really, […]
Show UP!
“The world is run by those who show up.” This quote came from a dear friend of mine as we mulled the world problems over a glass of wine one night not long ago. And, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. We spend hours upon hours behind our keyboards criticizing the decisions of […]
On Compassion: It Might Just Save The World
I just finished reading this wonderful book, Tattoos on the Heart, a collection of stories and insights from a Jesuit priest who runs a gang intervention program in the poorest neighborhoods of Los Angeles. This is book that gets to the core of compassion and unconditional love. This is a book whose wisdom goes far beyond the streets of LA […]
On Being Flexible: Part 2- Relationships
I read somewhere recently that while relationships should ideally be a 50:50 give-and-take, we can’t expect this to be the case all of the time. There may be times when one partner needs to give 80 to the other’s 20, or vice versa. In the case of a friendship, maybe one person is going through a really […]
What Can You Do?: Overcoming Eco-Anxiety Through Action
During a routine family dinner one night last week, my husband was clearly moved and agitated by a movie he had shown one of his biology classes earlier that day. The movie, Chasing Coral, is not a feel-good teen flick, but rather a harrowing documentary of the profound and drastic impacts climate change is having […]
Take a Knee…No, Not That Knee
Last October, my daughter and I took an all-day Wilderness Survival class where we learned basic survival techniques like, how to build a fire under any condition and how to build a shelter with only materials available in the surrounding environment. While I found these skill building lessons super useful (and fun), the one truly invaluable […]
What The Heck Is Equanimity and Why Do We Need It?
By cultivating attitudes of friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and equanimity toward the nonvirtuous, the mind-stuff retains its undisturbed calmness. -Yoga Sutras I.33 We are a culture inflamed. We are offended and angry and quick to judge and lash out at those who oppose our point of view. […]
On Being Flexible…Or, “Maybe So, Maybe Not, We Shall See”
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” –Charles Darwin How we respond to change is not only essential to our survival, but paramount to our happiness. We humans are creatures of habit and routine. We like to know in advance what’s […]
The Beauty of Letting Go
While we observe the autumn trees in full molt, we can all learn something from their wild, glorious farewell soiree… how to let go with beauty and grace. Letting go can be powerfully liberating, making space for the things that better nourish our souls, and better reflect who we currently are, or would like to be. We often hold on to […]
