I am far from having all of life’s answers — in fact, as I get older, I think my list of questions keeps growing — but I do think there’s value in acknowledging what life experience has taught me. Shortly after I turned 40, I kicked off a blog series here called “Things I Have Learned.” I started with 40 things I…
I’ve been listening to Deepak Chopra’s “Seven Spiritual Laws of Success” on repeat lately — when I’m at the gym or on the subway, I pick up wherever I left off and get a dose of Deepak. A few ideas stop me every time they loop back. One of them is his notion that there is one thing that you are better…
Preparing for our three weeks of clean living, I weaned down from two cups a day to just one. Then I started mixing decaf into my morning cup to make it half-caf.
Still, I braced for sluggishness and headaches. Instead, much to my surprise, I felt great. I didn’t have that morning fog I’d experienced for years, and had always cut through with coffee immediately upon waking up.
Because we don’t have to devote much conscious effort to the act of walking, our attention is free to wander—to overlay the world before us with a parade of images from the mind’s theatre. This is precisely the kind of mental state that studies have linked to innovative ideas and strokes of insight.
John and I recently committed to going to the gym three times a week, which requires making that a priority in our planning. Likewise, meditation required making a decision that my mental health is important enough to make time.
Even before we moved to New York City, John and I had a lot of conversations about how long we’d like to live here. It was not a foregone conclusion that we’d be lifelong New Yorkers. Now that we’re here, it’s both maddeningly expensive and difficult to imagine leaving. We recently visited our home state, Michigan, which renewed intense discussions…
We’ve just passed the halfway point of 2014 — how is the year going for you? Are you following through on your ambitions for the year?
For our new year’s card this year, we provided a range of verbs we felt showed actions of improving your life, including several pairs of actions: start and quit, commit and release, host and visit, save and give.
They say no one knows what goes on behind closed doors. But social media gives us more of a view of what’s happening in our friends’ lives, and sadly, I’ve gotten good at reading the signs of unraveling relationships. Facebook gives users a wide range of relationship status choices, including “separated” and “divorced,” but I’ve never seen a friend be that…
My fabulous British journalist friend Jane Mulkerrins travels the globe interviewing celebrities (Kevin Kline, Liv Tyler, Billy Bob Thornton, Tilda Swinton, Victoria’s Secret models … it goes on and on) but that’s not all she does. She recently interviewed Esther Perel, a couples therapist in New York. The headline on Jane’s article in the Telegraph tells you this is going to be good reading:…
What do you think is the meaning of life? Recent research shows that people who have a sense of purpose live longer — so if you figure out why you’re here, you might even have longer to pursue that purpose. A Huffington Post piece with the headline, Sense Of Purpose Adds Years To Your Life, Study Finds, says in part: Researchers…
This isn’t the blog post I expected to write today — I have a few topics I’ve been meaning to get to, including taking better care of my health and another take on doing what you love. But I couldn’t look away from the powerful #YesAllWomen conversation on Twitter this weekend. Yet another act of mass violence in California, this time…
My husband, John, and I celebrated our 14-year wedding anniversary this week, which had us reflecting on our gratitude for our happy marriage and what we think we’ve learned since we first said, “I do.” Just a few days before our anniversary, Leo Babauta included the following tips in his email newsletter, Zen Habits. I thought it was perfect timing, better…
Happiness is a subject I frequently blog about — specifically, that it’s not just a virus you catch or something that happens to you, but like love or fulfillment, it’s something you consciously cultivate. So of course I loved this column by Jacob Sokol on Huffington Post headlined 12 Things Happy People Do Differently — And Why I Started Doing Them.…
My husband and I have thrown dinner parties for years, but I always thought of them as big social occasions — a reason to haul out John’s mom’s silver, to set a proper table with fresh flowers and present a multi-course sit-down meal. We started hosting weekday spaghetti suppers late last year, inspired by our friend Pableaux’s weekly red beans…
I love birthdays — I think of them as my own personal New Year’s Day, reflecting on where I’ve been in my last year and how I can make my next year better. And my birthday always falls during Lent, which is a Christian season of reflection leading up to Easter. Though many people simplify Lent to giving something up,…
In the blocks around our Brooklyn apartment, there are several check-cashing places, which seem foreign to me. Why would you pay to cash a check when there are dozens of banks in the neighborhood? But many poor families don’t use banks, whether that’s because they can’t afford the fees or don’t trust them or live a cash-based life. That leads to…
We’re a little more than a week in — have you already abandoned your optimistic New Year’s resolutions? One of my favorite blogs, Zen Habits, recently had a post that spoke to the reasons we struggle to make change, even changes we might really want or need. The Child That Holds Us Back By Leo Babauta It took me a…
Christmas can be stressful for a lot of people. Maybe your mother nags you, your sibling gets on your last nerve, the kids are hopped up on sugar and new toys … maybe all of the above? But for this one day, can you step away from email, social media and Candy Crush to just be in the moment? If…
I don’t remember much about the commencement address at my college graduation. We were all crowded into a loud fieldhouse, which as I recall had lousy acoustics, and mainly we were waiting for those few seconds when we’d get to walk across the stage to prove we were graduates. I hope the graduates who heard Chris Sacca‘s commencement speech were able to…
