Category: health and well being


Can people change? Part II, with input from friends

Can people change? Part II, with input from friends

My recent post on whether people can change generated a nice conversation over on Facebook, so I’m bringing those comments in here to share other perspectives: Margaret Yang I voted yes. People can change. The thing is, most people don’t want to! Don’t we all think we’re just dandy the way we are? Jeffrey SaugerPeople can change their synapses. They’ve…

Deepak Chopra shares the equation for happiness

Deepak Chopra shares the equation for happiness

Deepak Chopra doesn’t seem to think happiness is all that complicated. In an interview with the San Antonio Express-News, Chopra said happiness comes down to generosity, and that attention, appreciation and affection are the keys to generosity. Chopra is the author of numerous books including “Seven Spiritual Laws of Success,” “Creating Affluence” and “The Ultimate Happiness Prescription,” as well as…

Measure your success by more than your title and pay

Measure your success by more than your title and pay

You might not go to Harvard Business Review expecting a long, personal tale of faith, morals and values — but I love HBR for knowing success means so much more than increasing profits. Clayton M. Christensen wrote a powerful essay called, “How Will You Measure Your Life?” Not to spoil it for you, but one of the more moving parts…

38 Things I Have Learned at 38, by Amy Spooner

38 Things I Have Learned at 38, by Amy Spooner

I love that the contributions to the “Things I Have Learned” series keep coming in. I asked a small number of my writer friends to participate at the outset, but now the majority of participants have volunteered themselves and that’s fantastic. Keep ’em coming, all! Today’s list comes from Amy Spooner, who I met when she profiled me for the…

7 tips for dealing with negative people, via Zen Habits

7 tips for dealing with negative people, via Zen Habits

I’ve shared posts before from one of my favorite blogs, Zen Habits. I know you can read it yourself if you’re interested, but this recent column on dealing with negative people just struck me as such good advice that I wanted to share here. Zen Habits encourages sharing by offering all its content freely, without restrictions. This post, borrowed from…

50 Things I Have Learned at 50, by Ann Belote Weir

50 Things I Have Learned at 50, by Ann Belote Weir

Today’s installment in the “Things I Have Learned” series comes from a colleague at my first job after college, where I worked as a reporter at the Alpena News. If you’ve never heard of Alpena, think cold. It’s five hours north of Detroit, and in addition to learning a tremendous amount about real-life newspapers, I learned such things as how…

Humans are wired to mimic those we're around

Humans are wired to mimic those we're around

I’d never heard of St. Vitus’ Dance until I read an ABC News story recently about its anniversary: St. Vitus’ Dance, back in 1374, groups of people — sometimes thousands at a time — started dancing uncontrollably. It continued for days, and in some cases, weeks and months. Some people reportedly danced until they collapsed from exhaustion or even death,…

Dan Gilbert speaks about synthetic happiness at TED

Dan Gilbert speaks about synthetic happiness at TED

If you’d like to take some deep thoughts into your long holiday weekend, here’s a great way to spend about 20 minutes. Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, explains in scientific terms that we overestimate the effects of things outside ourselves have on our happiness and that we have great capacity for creating synthetic happiness. In more concrete terms,…

35 Things I Have Learned at 35, by Amanda Hirsch

35 Things I Have Learned at 35, by Amanda Hirsch

Today is installment #3 in the “Things I Have Learned” series, with this latest list coming from Amanda Hirsch, a friend I met thanks to the wonder of Twitter. Previous lists have come from: me Margaret Yang Amanda Hirsch is a writer and comedian. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, Jordan, their dog, Cosmo, and a lot…

How should we gauge happiness?

How should we gauge happiness?

Lately I’ve read a number of articles that discuss the difference between happiness and life satisfaction. In my market research role, I often discussed with people the importance of words in survey questions — asking someone if they are satisfied with a product is different from asking if they’re happy with it, for example. I’m satisfied with my light bulbs…

In sickness and in health

In sickness and in health

I’ve been struck by how many people have trial by fire stories from a big journey — often at the very outset of the trip. Two couples we know had all their belongings stolen at the start of long international treks, and in the book I’m reading, Letters from New Orleans, the author’s girlfriend has her car stolen almost immediately…

Newvine Growing book club: Food Matters by Mark Bittman

Newvine Growing book club: Food Matters by Mark Bittman

Food writer Mark Bittman recently ended his long-running Minimalist column in the New York Times to shift into a new role as an opinion writer for the Times. This change of perspective, that food is about so much more than filling our bellies, is apparent in his book “Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating.” Bittman wrote in the announcement…

Newvine Growing book club — also on my book shelf

Newvine Growing book club — also on my book shelf

I’ve been traveling a lot lately, and rather than falling into my usual trap of reading fluffy magazines, I’ve used that travel time to dive into some good books. I pounded through Mark Bittman‘s “Food Matters” in just a few days. Much like Michael Pollan‘s books about what’s wrong with American food production, Bittman writes that how we eat is…

I am thankful for: things that could have been worse

I am thankful for: things that could have been worse

I woke up just in time to hear a doctor telling my parents how I was lucky my nose had shattered because otherwise the bone would have driven up into my brain and killed me. It was hard to feel especially lucky at that moment. I had broadsided another driver who hadn’t looked to see I was approaching doing about…