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Some people (even beyond Brinton)… love… ants and bees…
I marvel at the collective consciousness.
Ants and bees – it seems -- do have major advantages:
They don’t seem to suffer the downside from “politics” or “corporate ladders” or “bonus pools” or “exit strategies” or “529s” or “remote working” or “promotions” or “work/life balance” or “face time” or “timing of vacations” or “transference overlays with authority or bosses” or “how millennials are different” or “automation”...
Read MoreZen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh probably makes for a very good houseguest. He abides by a simple practice: Whenever you visit someone’s home, do their dishes for them.
Read MoreI’ve just returned from a week and a half in Denmark. There, I learned about, and experienced, a Danish concept called “hygge.” Most pronunciation guides simplify the sound to hoo-ga. But it’s NOT like Chatta-NOOGA. I’d spell it phonetically as heueu-gae – where you breathe out the H, make more of an “ew” than an “oo” sound, and finish with a “gae” sound like the “ae” sound in “Michael.” In short, pronounce it like you’re pretending to be on an episode of The Californians.
Read MoreAfter a series of personally testing events my sophomore year of college, I found myself up late one night in my dorm room ignoring homework and researching schools I could potentially transfer to. When I emailed my old admissions counselor for the small college that was a close second choice to my current university, she immediately called my cell phone the next day and highly encouraged me to apply as a transfer student. Within two weeks, I received an email saying that I had been accepted.
Read MoreA famous quote from Confucius reads: “the man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.” I’ve always liked that quote, but I think there’s even more to a question than just getting smarter.
Read MoreWhat a wonderful day to be a teacher. What a wonderful way to get to know the Earth better - through the eyes of a child. What a gift to have a boyfriend who is a wonderful father to wonderful kids - to have a glimpse of life in this role.
How easy it is to get caught up in the stress of managing it all and doing it all “right” - Life that is.
Read MoreAbout 3 years ago, Jaime and I led a mini workshop in NYC about Wellbeing. Dad came to show his support (he was always really good like that.)
Read MoreStillness is something I’ve always aimed for, but a practice I find immensely difficult. It’s the same flaw that so often gets me into trouble with the bees.
Read MoreRight here.
Right now.
At this moment.
I stand.
My feet are on the ground.
Breath enters my nose.
I hear.
Read MoreThis week I had one thought that stayed with me all week.
When I was 16-18 years old, I knew a girl called Mira. We used to study Maths together, she knew statistics, and could explain it to me. She found me really funny - she would laugh hard- with tears coming out, and she was good looking.
When I got to 17 or 18, any girl who paid attention to me was gonna get my attention back.
Neuroscientist Irving Biederman (University of Southern California) and his colleagues have identified a mechanism in human brains that leads us to one clear conclusion: we are designed to be ‘infovores’.
This is because we have a reward system that associates the release of innate opioids with acquiring new information. I have always been a very curious person, and indeed I am my happiest when I’m finding things out.
I had one of those driveway moments a couple days ago—listening to Frank Oz interviewed on the New Yorker podcast about his new documentary, “Muppet Guys Talking.” Oz was the voice of iconic muppets like Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Cookie Monster, Bert, Grover, and Animal. He also brought a little character called “Yoda” to life. He’s also directed a dozen or so feature films (Little Shop of Horrors, Bowfinger, The Score).
Read MoreMy sister took my awesome blender with her to her apartment in NYC while I was at college last year. She didn’t ask me if she could borrow it in the first place so I didn’t know she had it at all. The plan of leaving me out of the know would have worked out just fine for her had she not totally forgotten it under the train seat coming back from Manhattan.
I recently told that disappointing occurrence to my boyfriend Chad.
Read MoreJulie Sun wrote a powerful piece about being “busy” and how, in Chinese, the word itself was a 2-part word that read separately meant “heart dying”. At the recent Road Makers gathering, we were talking about the idea of being busy in a few of our groups. The always wonderful and thoughtful Reed Lowenstein offered that he avoided the word “busy” because it meant someone “did it to me” rather than “doing it to myself”.
Read MoreI’m not so sure people want us to give them answers and advice,
As they want us to ask them good questions.
And for us to hold a safe space for them.
We each have a natural set point, a place we feel most comfortable.
We might be seers who can imagine, out of whole cloth, a future.
We might be doers who need to be neck-deep in the work to come to conclusions that mean anything to us.
We might be analyzers who see the whole field of play and can visualize which pieces need to be moved in what ways to tilt the field.
Read MoreI started running when I was a freshman in college. And once I started, I couldn’t stop.
When I moved to Chicago for school, I started running along Lake Michigan as a substitute for the competitive tennis I once played, but soon began to appreciate the solitude. Being an introvert on a social campus exhausted me and running became my surefire way to get some alone time with my music every morning. I quickly became addicted.
Read MoreA couple years ago I heard the following working definition of patience:
“Patience is the willingness to remain in discomfort”.
When I heard this definition I immediately ceased asking others to be patient. As Priscilla suggested in repeating my logic back to me, asking others to be “patient” might be equivalent to saying “suffer in silence”. ;)
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