I hear people talk about those who have less — usually less materially or less opportunity — as deserving help and compassion. With due respect to their problems, I’d like to consider another challenging situation: having too much. First let me preface the huge difference between having too little and too much: people with too much can cut back. People with limited access to resources or opportunity can’t usually create[…] Keep reading →

Do you suffer from low motivation, not knowing your passions, laziness, and other forms of just not feeling like putting the effort in? Do you want to have more motivation and passion? Most people tell me they’re lazy about a lot of things and don’t know their passions. Luckily, you can change that. Personally I don’t like being that way or hanging around with people like that. I connect with[…] Keep reading →

  Whenever I read about how today’s world is moving faster, competition is greater, people are more separated, more together, or whatever superlative that supposedly sets our time different than any other, I think of this quote Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the[…] Keep reading →

If you like improving your life enough to read my stuff, you probably know about a study (probably one of many) that found that people who won the lottery and people who had accidents that left them in wheelchairs both returned to the same emotional levels a year later. What do you conclude from such results? How much can we misunderstand ourselves if winning the lottery doesn’t help out lives?[…] Keep reading →

Here is a deep question about values, spontaneity, risk, adventure, the best things in life, and your appetite for them. The context It begins with my mom’s garden years ago when she lived in Nebraska. Now I’m not that big on tomatoes, like some people are, and less so then than now. But when I tasted the cherry tomatoes from that garden they tasted like sunshine. I couldn’t believe how[…] Keep reading →

I’ve been meaning to record some thoughts on China, having been working here cumulatively maybe a couple months, mainly based on observations around Shanghai. I’m not trying to imply particular insight, just what struck me. People tell me I look at things differently than most, and in insightful ways. They wiped out most physical and architectural remnants of their history, apparently with the goal of modernizing. Their cities are all[…] Keep reading →

I was talking to a friend who felt mildly depressed about learning to manage your mood. She had read my friend’s story I posted recently about changing his emotions. (As an aside, I have to rank his experiment among the most effective practices you can do to learn to manage your emotions.) I talked to her about how most of my clients can change their environments and behavior easily. To[…] Keep reading →

If we could use leadership in any place most, I can think of few places more important than in understanding what is happening with our environment, energy, and how it will affect us, meaning the economy. Some conclude that since before Revelations through Malthus and beyond people have been predicting the end of the world, yet the world hasn’t ended, we have solved all problems before and we’ll solve whatever[…] Keep reading →

Walden is one of the great American books on nature and American society. Friends and longtime readers know I like it and much of its message. It criticizes the pick-a-little-talk-a-little-cheep-cheep-cheep-talk-a-lot-pick-a-little-more gossip-about-your-neighbor culture in favor of simplicity and appreciating nature. Facebook is in the news a lot. The opening sentences to Walden made me think about Facebook and the values spending time on it promotes. When I wrote the following pages,[…] Keep reading →