Blog
Happiness & Marriage
This year, my wife and I celebrated our 30th anniversary. Around the same time, I read a blog post called “8 Traits of a Happy Marriage, According to a Couples Therapist.” I agree with all eight of the defining characteristics of long-lasting, happy marriages. I am particularly drawn to these seven (I don’t disagree with […]
Read MoreEating & Alzheimer’s
With dementia (and specifically Alzheimer’s disease) a part of my family history, an article in The Atlantic, “The Startling Link Between Sugar and Alzheimer’s,” caught my attention. Its sub-title, “A high-carb diet, and the attendant high blood sugar, are associated with cognitive decline,” reinforced my commitment to the way I have been eating: watching my […]
Read MoreA Leader Know What Matters
My friend Ed sent me the following note after we had gotten together and talked about the way we each have a drive to make a difference; to make the world a better place. I recently spoke at an event and closed with this… In the end: What will matter is not what we bought, […]
Read MoreBiases & Your Happiness
I’ve written before about things I learned from Daniel Kahneman’s wonderfully interesting book, “Thinking, Fast and Slow“. In a section on availability bias, Kahneman shared useful information for couples. Availability bias is the way we judge situations by relying on immediate examples that come mind. For example, as Kahneman points out, divorces among Hollywood celebrities […]
Read MoreDo Your Part for Your Health
Early this summer, the New York Times published “How Long Can We Live? The Limit Hasn’t Been Reached”. The piece explains, “The mortality rate flattens among the oldest of the old, a study of elderly Italians concludes, suggesting that the oldest humans have not yet reached the limits of life span.” What they are saying […]
Read MoreRemoving Temptations to help your Willpower
I’ve written a lot about the way willpower impacts our ability to make changes that stick. The bottom line: we have a limited stock of willpower. It’s been studied. It’s a fact. Because of this, the key to making changes that stick is to go slow; to break down your big goals into small pieces […]
Read MoreGiving the Benefit of the Doubt
“Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood” is the fifth of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, one of the all-time, best-selling, personal development books. We often jump to conclusions and make assumptions with incomplete information. When we do that—when we fail to seek to understand someone else’s point of view, before […]
Read MoreJuice is not Health Food
I have learned the best way to visualize the about the amount of sugar in anything is to look at the nutrition label and divide the number of grams of sugar by four. That will tell you how many teaspoons of sugar are in one serving of that item. Every time I give a speech, […]
Read MoreLeaders are Followers
I heard someone recently say great leaders are not leaders—they are followers. They are following a cause greater than themselves. People came to hear Martin Luther King, Jr. speak not because of him but because of themselves; because of something inside which told them what type of country they wanted to live in. I loved […]
Read MoreScience of Happiness
I was at a conference where I had the good fortune to hear Catherine Sanderson speak on The Science of Happiness. Sanderson is a professor at Amherst College where she studies and teaches the subject of happiness. Her speech was fantastic. Here are some of my takeaways: Why do we care about happiness? Happy people […]
Read More
Six Simple Rules for a Better Life is a book filled with practical, achievable suggestions for all kinds of ways you can improve your life, along with a game plan for doing so.