I challenge you to watch the YouTube video of Wynton Bernard Facetiming his mom without getting emotional — Suppose you’ve made a new year’s resolution to improve yourself, get better at something, quit a bad habit, show up for regular exercise or commit to better nutrition. In that case, the odds are that many of you have already given up. If you did give up on your commitment…

Our efforts to intervene can be doing much more harm than good — I want to think we are good parents. We have thirty and twenty-eight-year-old daughters still under our roof. Is it possible we can be too good at this parenting thing to the point it’s harmful? The older daughter left, lived in Chicago for a year, and then boomeranged back. Did…

A not-so-simple hack to greater mental and physical health — What therapist in their right mind would say, "So, in the future, how about you call me on an as-needed basis." I've never had psychotherapy until recently. There was a stigma attached — if you needed to see a therapist, you were messed up mentally. You can't handle life. …

At my age, the goal was not to fall on my ass or, worse, break bones — "Don't go ice skating, Jimmy." This is what my 89-year-old mom warned me when I told her about my intention to skate with some coworkers during a lunch break. "You could fall and break a hip." She further cautioned." Break a hip? Breaking bones never occurred to me until she…

Don’t worry; it’s a good sign about your character — I’m one of those people who have shelves of books I’ve never read. I’m a book junkie. I buy books with the intention of reading, and now they collect dust. I have more books than I could ever read. And now, with the high production quality of audiobooks, there’s even…

It’s the one thing that you can take and give for free — What better time to receive a story from the New York Times about an ongoing eighty-year study by researchers at Harvard regarding the question: What makes a good life? Not surprisingly, they discovered that one scientifically proven predictor of happiness is developing warmer relationships. A book that compiles the research…

Sometimes taking the road least traveled or the back door entry is the better plan — As a kid growing up on the northwest side of Chicago, we hung out in alleys a lot. Alleys were always adjacent to the principal streets so that you could get anywhere in the neighborhood more discreetly. It’s easier to smoke and hatch mischievous schemes undetected. We had easy access…

Whenever one thing ends, so another begins — better to get comfortable with it now — Remember when it felt like the pandemic would never end? It felt like going out and socializing was gone for good. Yet, slowly we are getting back some of what we thought was lost. For many of us, it will never be quite the same. It’s evident in the remote…

These six traits enable us to unlock special abilities for deeper relationships and connections with people — Have you ever noticed that introverts are quick to admit they're introverted, yet extroverts are less likely to claim their trait as outgoing and gregarious people? Many people I consider extroverted will say they are introverts. Perhaps it's because everyone needs alone time — even extroverts. In contrast, a person…