Practice Receiving Love

The key to experiencing more love in your life is recognizing the many different ways people show it. So often it’s the case we miss the love sent our way because we are looking for it to be expressed in a particular way. For example, an adolescent doesn’t feel loved by his mother because she […]

May I Live with Ease

The last phrase of loving kindness meditation is “May I live with ease.” It sounds great, but what does it actually mean? And how would that even be possible? Between juggling the daily demands of work and personal life, let alone in a pandemic and time of economic and political upheaval, living with ease may […]

The Upside of Impermanence

A central teaching of Buddhism is impermanence. The idea that nothing lasts forever. Everything including our very existence will end. And while we all know this intellectually, there is a tendency to push this reality to the back of our minds. After all, it’s human nature to want to hold onto positive experiences, to get […]

Mind the Gap

You’ve probably heard “awareness is half the battle” when it comes to changing behavior. That’s because so many of the behaviors, thoughts, and emotional responses we want to change are done on autopilot or without awareness. For example, you reflexively light up a cigarette with your morning coffee, or grab a beer before you sit […]

Get curious!

Want to make your life a little more interesting? Get curious. Curiosity is an inner drive to know or understand. It motivates us to seek out the answers to previously unanswered questions and find solutions for unsolved problems. Studies show that because naturally curious people enjoy the search for knowledge, they can sustain their interest […]

Multiple Paths to the “good life”

If the proverbial good life still eludes you, there is encouraging news. Psychologists have discovered yet another way to reach it. For many years psychological research suggested that there were two primary paths to the good life: the pursuit of happiness and the pursuit of satisfaction. The first path involves maximizing happiness simply by doing […]

Gratitude

Today we bring our awareness to the people and things in our lives that we are grateful for. We acknowledge the good no matter our current circumstances. When we’re in the midst of an emotional crisis or struggling to overcome life’s problems, it can challenging to find things to be thankful for. But that’s precisely […]

Diversify your values

Life feels more meaningful when it reflects your values. If you value knowledge, you’re more likely to feel satisfied with life when you’re actively learning, whether it’s studying a foreign language, or exploring a country you’ve never visited before. If you value fitness, you probably feel more engaged and alive when you’re training than when […]