How Beauty-Inspired Awe Can Boost Your Mood
Like any self-respecting Netflix junkie, I wasn’t thrilled by a recent study linking TV binges to depression and other health woes. True, researchers hadn’t yet proved that watching back-to-back episodes of Orange Is the New Black would turn me into a miserable lump. But sure as Piper Chapman’s next cold prison shower, that pronouncement was […]
How I Turned Weeping into Purpose in Mom’s Last Days
Decades ago, my mother and I had kayaked together in choppy seas. We had zipped through dense woods on a dogsled. We had rafted over rapids, climbed swaying ladders up sandstone cliffs and hunkered in a tent 5,000 feet up a mountain during a thunderstorm. But we’d never felt half as daunted as we did […]
The Creative Benefits of a Little Goofiness
Midafternoon. A windowless basement. One hundred sixty solid minutes of classroom time. With all these strikes against us, is it any wonder my humor-writing students and I sometimes feel as sharp and creative as a drawerful of socks? Good thing I always smuggle in my favorite stimulant. I’m speaking, of course, about goofiness. This isn’t quite the […]
32 Nuggets of Wisdom (with a Twist)
The upside of being a columnist faced with a milestone birthday—or so it seems from pieces I’ve read by other columnists—is you get to spout some of your vast accumulated wisdom. But what if your accumulated wisdom is only, as the punsters would say, half-vast? I’ve thought a lot about this question, now that my own dreaded […]
Why Doing Less Is More Fulfilling
On the day you die, what will you hope you did on this one?
Sometimes a Tragic Tale Can Offer Inspiration…
Have you ever had a book land in your lap at just the right moment? As if the universe is saying, “Here, kid, I saw this and thought of you”? The Opposite of Loneliness was exactly that sort of book for me. It may, I suspect, be that sort for a lot of us. And to think […]
A Gratitude Habit to Boost Your Positivity
There’s a blackout while I’m in the basement of my house. At least it didn’t happen when I was cleaning the cats’ litter box, I tell myself. Next morning, I spill coffee all over the kitchen counter. At least it didn’t go in the silverware drawer. Then it’s on to bonking my hip on a table (at […]
Talk to Strangers—It’s Good for Your Body and Soul
The other day at a restaurant, my 9-year-old daughter did a magic trick that never fails to amaze me: pulling friendship out of thin air. One moment, she and another girl were at separate outdoor tables with their separate families, eating dinner. The next (abracadabra!) they were racing up and down the grassy canal bank […]
How Breaks Can Turn into Breakthroughs
Just in case any children read this column—peeking, as kids inevitably will, at Mom’s or Dad’s seductive copy of SUCCESS—allow me to start with a disclaimer: I in no way endorse playing hooky. It’s a terrible, awful, dangerous idea. Unless you’re a grown-up. My own addiction to hooky began 17 years ago. On deadline with […]
The Leadership Secret to Supercharging Your Team
So you were first in your MBA class and have the smarts of Jeff Bezos and Marissa Mayer combined. If you want the brightest possible future in business, you may still have a few things to learn. “During our school years, there’s this fallacious sense that only how well you do academically is going to […]
How Social Media Helps You Be Your Best Self
The day my sink’s water filter exploded and sprayed the kitchen like Old Faithful, I did a little exploding myself. Four-letter words? I yelled them. Spluttering shrieks? I shrieked them. And then, seconds later, I was laughing. What had changed? I’d remembered my audience. Not the two cats who stood blinking nearby (though their baffled […]
Beat Boredom: Get Your Game On
Mowing the… yawn. Shopping at the grocery… snore. Whoever you are, wherever you live, chances are there’s at least one task that bores the pants off you. For me, it’s shoveling snow, something we upstate New Yorkers do while the rest of you are frolicking in meadows with bluebirds and puppies (or so we assume). […]
