How you think inside is how you are externally. If inside you’re negative, don’t be fooled: people see you as negative. If inside you’re positive, even when you’re sad, you light up any room you enter. Here’s the thing: you have some control over your attitude, you have no control over the environment in which you live. By now you know: life isn’t easy, and there is always something to be sad about. However, the saddest person on the planet may not be as depressed as you. If you don’t believe that, look at this video. In Nigeria, there’s a slum with over 200,000 people living atop literal sewa ..read more

Around 5000 years ago, the aliens landed and handed out little calendars to everyone building those statues on Easter Island. “Here”, they said, “look here.” And they pointed to a box labeled January 1. “Wha,” said the Easter Islanders. “Wha? Wha? Wha????” “It’s the first day of the year, you idiot. From now on, when you wake up on this day of the year every year you’re going to say, ‘THIS IS THE YEAR!’” “Thi I Yee” “THIS IS THE YEAR!” “THIS IS THE YEAR!” “Yeah, say it like you mean it. No more eating. No more dating losers. Exercise. Keep a diary. No more business failures. This is it! Nonsto ..read more

One time, Will Smith was working on a film set in Toronto. It was the middle of winter and they were shooting night scenes, so the actors and crew worked 6pm to 6am. Brrr! During breaks, Smith could have huddled in his trailer, complaining about the bitter cold. Instead, he ran around making jokes and delivering hot chocolate to crew members. He acted on a question that he later explained is constantly on his mind: “How can I make this experience more magical?“ Working in the cold sucks, but the job had to be done. Rather than complain about it, and rather than just endure it, Smith set out to ..read more

In her tremendously popular first book, Self-Compassion, psychologist Kristin Neff, Ph.D., transformed our approach to self-care and how we see our relationship with ourselves. Based on research, she developed a model of self-compassion with three elements of learning to be kind to yourself. First, you can consciously choose to see yourself with self-kindness instead of self-judgment. You can opt to practice kindness by treating yourself as you would someone you love and care about. Second, you can choose between seeing yourself in isolation and believing you’re the only one who’s sufferi ..read more

NEGATIVE EVENTS CARRY MORE EMOTIONAL WEIGHT The sad fact is that negative events in a person’s life carry far more emotional weight than the positive. And those negative events – even seemingly small ones – carry a much greater ability to damage a person, than larger positive events do to heal them. Negative pivot points are almost always at the root of struggle. I can say with assurance that all of the patients I’ve treated who are in the midst of struggle have pivot points that are related to the six categories of struggle: anger, fear, addiction, shame, excessive desire for status or money ..read more

Do you know the saying “the morning is wiser than the evening”? This expression, originating from the Russian fairytale Vasilisa the Beautiful, is used to caution someone to better sleep with the initial reaction and wait for a response. In a lot of ways, it has to do with the power of sleep on mental health, because it’s more than getting rest after a tiring day. The relationship between quality of sleep and mental well-being is complex, but one that you can improve with some practice and proper care of yourself. We are going to explore this, as well as other ways sleep affects our mind, emot ..read more

Everyone talks about habits you should give up or things you should start doing. But the reality is most of us have a limited number of hours in a day and unhealthy addictions to things that aren’t great for us. Instead of quitting cold turkey or trying to force yet another morning routine into my life, I’ve found it a lot easier to swap out habits. I swapped six terrible habits for six better habits, and I can genuinely say these little changes have made me a more fulfilled and happier person. 1. Tumblr for Twitter I have spent a lot of time browsing on Twitter. I deleted the app, b ..read more

Love sometimes means having difficult conversations. Perhaps none are more challenging than interventions. However, you shouldn’t let someone you deeply care about continue down a dangerous path of addiction or eating disorders. I recently had an intervention with someone I loved dearly and learned a lot. Here are six tips for a respectful and loving intervention with a friend. 1. Recognize the Signs That Intervention Is Necessary One of the toughest steps to any intervention is recognizing when one is necessary. It might be trickier than ever right now, considering the extraordinary stress th ..read more

Earlier in my career I had the work persona, and the at home persona. Even a DISC assessment revealed this duality. My natural state is someone who drives things forward and who uses encouragement, or influence to bolster support. My adaptive state is someone who plays by the rules, complies, and is a boring corporate suit. I discovered over the years that my adaptive state was a proactive way for me to play smaller, so that my bosses could feel less threatened from someone who naturally becomes influential in the organization. However, my natural state eventually emerges and that’s when confl ..read more

There is no denying that modern life throws countless hurdles in our way. However, as Marcus Aurelius used to say, “the mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. What stands in the way becomes the way.” What this ancient Roman emperor meant by this is that as long as we are able to grow and constantly change our frame of reference we can turn every obstacle into an opportunity for improvement and look for solutions in new creative ways. For all these things to be possible, though, we need to be ready to await challenges with open arms and adopt a growth mindset t ..read more