I recently watched the HBO documentary, Risky Drinking. It delivers a powerful, disturbing, and important message about dangers to our health and happiness from what are now called alcohol use disorders. The documentary had four segments. All of them were meaningful. The first segment focused on binge drinking. The filmmakers…
I was listening to a TED Radio Hour podcast about memory, and Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow (a book I loved), was saying we get confused between our experiences and our memory of experiences. As an example, he talked about how people can have a great day,…
As I have done for each of the past few years, here are the many ways I enjoyed the experiences of my year: places I visited, books I read, what I watched on TV, and more. Books I love reading and I love learning. I read quite a bit every…
I write a lot about the importance of what I call Proactive Positivity. Because people have a natural ability to think about negative things, we need to work to offset that by being proactive about what's positive in our lives. There many good positivity exercises, for example, daily (or weekly)…
Many people dismayed by Hillary Clinton's loss are looking for any positive takeaway from her run. They point to her winning the popular vote by almost three million votes as evidence we will have our first female president sooner than later. Having a female at the top of a major…
I was fortunate to have the opportunity to spend some time on the phone with Michelle Gielan this week. I loved our conversation. Michelle is the author of Broadcasting Happiness and, along with Shawn Achor, author The Happiness Advantage (one of the great books I read during the last few…
As we enter the holiday season, it's a good time to talk about healthy eating. About a year ago, I read a terrific letter to the editor that led me to the Web site of the American Heart Association (AHA). In the letter, which appeared in the Record, a newspaper…
I recently read Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture—and What We Can Do About It, by Kate Harding. Harding pulls no punches in her assault on rape culture. She gives examples that will surely disgust any thinking person. “If we all abhor rape,” she says, “how did…
I've written a bunch of times about the value of experiences over things—about spending your money and time on experiences rather than stuff. My wife and were in a home goods store recently and she was looking for a birthday present for her sister. She was struggling to find something when…
This is a guest post by Frank Lavine. We’ve all been there – I know I have. The majority of my friends and family have, too. The “all-time low” that we can find ourselves dealing with is a stressful, challenging part of life. There is no shame in hitting a…
I was listening to a TED Radio Hour podcast called “Crisis and Response,” about how various people dealt with crises in their lives. One was a doctor on Mt. Everest during a deadly storm memorialized in Jon Krakauer’s amazing book, Into Thin Air. Another was a story about 741741, the…
Seeking first to understand is a habit I try to follow. It's one I first learned while reading Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I often talk about seeking first to understand when I speak about "Be Nice", the second of my Six Simple Rules for a Better…