Use It or Lose It: The Hidden Power of Attention
What if "use it or lose it" applies to far more than muscles and physical skills? The hidden power of attention shapes everything from intuition and empathy to habits, dreams,...

In 1993, Conari Press published a book called Random Acts of Kindness. This book started a movement of people looking for ways to be kind to complete strangers. It was not at all unusual to see a bumper sticker on the car in front of you that read, “Practice Random Acts of Kindness.”
For most of my childhood, one of my favorite sayings was “It’s not fair!” As an adult, I continued to believe life should go the way I wanted it to go. When I couldn’t control the external world, I tried to make things better by transferring the sense of “Life isn’t right when . . .” to “I’m not right unless . . .”

Two points emerge from our troubles during this stage. The first is the incorrect belief that our happiness and the success of the relationship are determined by what our partner says and does. As I’ve emphasized before and will again, all relationship change begins within you...

New research suggests that focusing on the “silver linings” of our negative traits can lead to positive results. Researchers call the finding a “silver lining” theory.
This month begins with an opportunity to look after each other and recognise the vulnerability of our shared humanity. We all have our own personal battles to fight, our fears and anxieties, shame and grief. No one is immune to these fundamental challenges...

There is something in the culture of banking that lends itself toward making otherwise fairly good people do bad things. That’s the finding of a new study published in the journal, Nature. And it may simply confirm the suspicions of many following endless news of bankers being outed for bad behaviour.
Purplewashing is a term I have coined to describe the tendency people have to gloss over, repress, or deny uncomfortable emotions, usually by “spiritualizing” the situation or by “being nice” about it. I call it purplewashing because it is similar to...

The manic nature of Black Friday has often led shoppers to engage in fistfights and other misbehavior in their desperation to snatch up the last ultra-discounted television, computer or pair of pants.

To examine a person’s difficulties is to enter into the psychological atmosphere of his or her family. We are marked by their characteristics, but also by their insane ideas, their negative feelings, their inhibited desires, and their destructive acts. All problems have their roots in the family tree.

It's not hard to bring a little more equality into each others' lives. Kerry Morrison interviews homeless veteran John Watkins in the Hollywood Hills. Hollywood was one of the first communities to join the 100,000 Homes Campaign. Watkins has been provided with housing.
Do you remember the 1970s hit by The Temptations, "Just My Imagination"? The refrain goes: "It was just my imagination running away with me". And this morning as I was reflecting on certain events in my life, I realized that a lot of times we create problems in our head...

"It’s a procedure, a simple procedure which takes time and effort. I’ve been working on this ever since I was very young. I won’t tell you all the formula, but the first step is to turn off your inner dialogue, you know, the little voices in your head.”

Stories of teens taking and sending a naked picture of themselves with their phones have been all over the news media in recent years. The outcome? Shocking, according to reports which have suggested that humiliation and sometimes even suicide can follow.

What many people don’t realize is that in the journey of life we can head in only two directions: toward well-being and away from it. Your emotions indicate where you are going. If you are feeling bad, it means you’re thinking thoughts that are taking you away from well-being and moving you toward distress.
We need the mental plane, and it can be our greatest ally; but it can be our biggest enemy. The mental plane has the capacity to take us to the past. It can also take us to the future, but the mind needs to be trained or it will...
Whether or not we’re part of a couple, we come into the world alone, we leave alone, and we make many of our most important decisions after we’ve done our own private soul-searching. We and we alone are responsible for our behavior; we create our own lives.

Anxious people tend to perceive their world in a more threatening way. That is, the more anxious a person is, the more likely they are to notice threatening things around them. This is called the threat bias.
In November, Pluto aligns with Uranus and Chiron for a relationship which continues until February 2015. This alignment points a way through challenges and out the other side. It invites us to actively engage with any areas of struggle in our lives now and to do so with a wholehearted commitment to...

The news was beyond depressing. It was ridiculous. It was unbelievable. Finally, after the closing sortie of auto accidents and snarled traffic, the broadcaster announced, “. . .and now for a great new book by an author who is going to tell you how to live a happy life.”

I learned to sharpen my will power in order to manifest joy every single day. Will power is our greatest friend in life. Don’t let anyone else take the steering wheel and tell you which direction to head in.
Have you ever had something turn out far different than you expected it would and felt immensely disappointed? Have you ever been so let down by a person or situation that you thought you’d never get over it? Have you ever not lived up to your own standards and felt a sense of failure?