I recently read a short essay by Emily Perl Kingsley about her experience of raising a child with Down syndrome. Although the essay is widely shared among parents of special needs children, the message is for all of us.  It’s about having your expectations turned upside down. Welcome to Holland When you’re going to have […]

One step in the process of self-empowerment is embracing reality or accepting what is. This statement seems counter-intuitive. It seems like if you’re going to make things happen and live your dreams then you can’t be content or accept the way things are, but work or fight to make them different. Paradoxically, however, it begins […]

Hi my friend, As I’ve let you know in recent blog posts, I’m now launching my new video course entitled, “Claiming Your Power to Live a Happy and Abundant Life!” As a thank you to my email subscribers, I’m offering the course to you for a limited time for just $9.99 (full price $194). Click here […]

Most of us have ideas about how to improve our nation and the world. And yet we recognize that so many of the political and economic forces at work in the world are beyond our ability to influence. So we watch…and we wait…we hope…and we complain…forgetting that nothing will make the world better than simple […]

Our world is filled with so much noise and so many distractions that we have become uncomfortable with stillness. If things get quiet, we look at our phones. Or if we’re driving down the street, we turn on the radio. We arrive home and turn on the television or keep ourselves continually busy. This is […]

Research tells us that people who have grateful hearts are happier, less depressed, and less stressed than those who are less grateful. They report a greater sense of purpose, more control over their lives, greater self-acceptance, and more optimism. They are more empathetic, more forgiving, less materialistic and have more positive ways of coping with difficulties.

I’ve long been interested in the understanding happiness and so have studied the research over the last several years. Here is what science tells us happiness looks like: The Genetic Component Notice that 50% of our happiness is hard-wired. This has been determined by studies on identical twins. The first of these studies was conducted […]

(This article was written by guest author, Ed Engel. Thanks, Ed.) One of my children gave me a T-shirt with this slogan on the front: “I can only make one person happy; I pick me.” I suppose my child was trying to send a message, not only to me, but perhaps a warning to others […]

In early January I published an article entitled Understanding Depression. Since then, I’ve continued to think about and read the latest science about depression. I realize that I got something wrong and so wanted to publish this post to set the record straight. I said in my article is that “…depression is not a sign […]

Like most people, I love music and frequently find myself humming a tune over and over in the back of my mind. I’ve learned to pay attention to the words of these songs because they have significance to what is going on in my life at the moment. Rarely is the entire song relevant; just a line or two that my subconscious mind is telling me to pay attention to—perhaps a lesson I need to learn.