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. In one of my newsletters, and later in a post here, I said the following: "I feel fortunate (and grateful) that investing my time and money in experiences…
After a recent speaking engagement, the COO of the office where I presented sent out the following note to everyone in the office: Earlier this month, David Singer visited our office and spoke about his book, Six Simple Rules for a Better Life. There was terrific feedback from so many of…
This is a guest post by Louis Savalli. Every day is the same. From the moment you drag yourself out of bed, you’re devoting your time to taking care of other things and people. Whether it’s your kids, spouse, colleagues, customers, your house, or your car – you barely get…
Someone I know recently said to me, after a particularly frustrating turn of events in her life, “Why do these things always happen to me?” I know the right thing to do would have been to nod my head and say something about how sorry I feel for her. But…
Living in a state of mindfulness is a worthy goal. Living mindlessly is not normally something to strive for. Yet, mindfulness and mindlessness both play a part in habit change. First, a definition I found for mindfulness in Psychology Today: a state of active, open attention on the present. When…
When I was in high school, I took a psychology class. It was one of the few high school classes I enjoyed. The teacher, Mr. Mascari, taught us a relaxation technique I went on to use for many years. I would close my eyes and imagine the sun shining on…
My friend Kevin was telling me of his weight loss struggles. He realized he kept procrastinating about working on the weight loss because there are about 10 habits he wanted to focus on to make it happen. He realized he was overwhelming himself by thinking about the 10 habits, and…
Over the last two weeks I shared some background, and then some highlights from a wonderful book, Zen Habits: Mastering the Art of Change by Leo Babauta. As Leo explains, quitting a bad habit is harder than starting a good one because you have the urge to continue the bad habit. Here…
I just finished reading a wonderful book, Zen Habits: Mastering the Art of Change by Leo Babauta. Last week I introduced the book and shared some background, and this week I’ll share some of the highlights from Leo’s book, which I highly recommend. Mindfulness. Leo learned to watch his mind. He…
I just finished reading a wonderful book, Zen Habits: Mastering the Art of Change, by Leo Babauta. Leo has written, in many ways, what I have envisioned as a possible follow-up to Six Simple Rules for a Better Life. I wanted Six Simple Rules for a Better Life not to be another one…
A few weeks ago, I woke up and my left hand hurt, specifically the lower half of my thumb down to where it met my wrist. After two weeks of trying to avoid using my thumb in certain ways, it was better, but not all the way, so I went…
After receiving quite a bit of positive feedback on a recent newsletter piece, I am publishing it here... At an end-of-year yoga class, the instructor asked us to form an intention for the coming year. I decided to focus on respond vs. react. Responding instead of reacting is something I…