Flower Mandalas Project

A few months ago, I took a business bootcamp course from Mirasee, an organization that helps build and scale businesses using a combination of audience-building strategies and online courses. The intention of the course designer and company founder, Danny Iny, was to teach participants how to jump start a business. I’m not sure, yet, whether the course will help me do that, but it’s already made a difference in how I approach problems… Continue Reading →

Creative activities—and the creative approach to life that often accompanies them—can help us better withstand the huffing and puffing of life's Big Bad Wolf. Creative activities are rewarding outlets for self-expression. They give us a sense of accomplishment, often have a centering effect, and they’re usually fun to do. But besides these obvious benefits, creative activities can also enhance how we approach our lives. When we work creatively, we dive deep into ourselves.… Continue Reading →

Ground on which we can only be saved from destruction by fighting without delay is desperate ground. - Sun Tzu, The Art of War Stress is one of the most insidious challenges to building resilience. It can be a constant strain on our natural balancing mechanism, gradually wearing down its efficacy and slowing its response time. Basic ways to reduce stress that therapists often recommend include changing your emotional relationship to the stressor… Continue Reading →

NOTE: This post is adapted from my new book The Art of Balance: Staying Sane in an Insane World. I’m posting it here because it’s the key to staying balanced when the road gets rocky.   To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill. – Sun Tzu, The Art of War To stay sane in an insane world, we need more than new tools and techniques. We also have to keep doing… Continue Reading →

This post is a reprise of one of the most popular posts from last year. It’s about how to take care of yourself when you’re too pressed for time for normal self-care. It’s one of many self-care practices in my new book The Art of Balance: Staying Sane in an Insane World, which will be on sale for a “Countdown Deal” for four days, starting Friday.  In the summer of 1979, after two… Continue Reading →

NOTE : I’ve been working with an illustrator on the characters in my forthcoming book on balance and thought you might be interested in what we’ve developed. Here’s the cast of characters and a brief introduction to them. Know thy self, know thy enemy. – Sun Tzu , The Art of War This is a book about balance: What disrupts it, what restores it, and how to keep it going. It is also a story, and like any story, it has a cast of characters. Some are friends and fellow travelers. Some are enemies. In the pages of this book you will come to know them well. But first, some introductions.   Al/Alice   We are the heroes of this saga, an epic battle not only for balance but literally for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.   UnBalancer   The villain in our story is the nefarious UnBalancer . UnBalancer is a fearsome and sometimes deadly force. It strives single-mindedly to unseat us, and sometimes it wins the battle – but not, as we’ll see, the war. ...

To stay sane in an insane world , we need more than new tools and techniques . To maintain sanity, we also have to keep doing the things that got us there. The final piece of the resilience puzzle is to build Balancer -enhancing attitudes and practices into our daily lives, so they are as much a part of our routines as breathing. Then we keep watch to make sure we’re staying on track. When Balancer incorporates the new tools ReBalancer uses, it gets stronger. Mini self-care then becomes something we do every day, not just when stress is high. The Experiment becomes an experimental attitude we carry with us 24/7. Meditation becomes a daily activity. Self-compassion and acceptance become the new norm. And so on. But changing habits takes time . If we don’t stay on top of our game, we run the risk of drifting back to our old, less resilient ways. UnBalancer loves when that happens! So we need a method for regularly checking in with ourselves to make sure we’re using all the shiny ne...

NOTE : I’ve been working with an illustrator on the characters in my forthcoming book on balance and thought you might be interested in what we’ve developed. Here’s the cast of characters and a brief introduction to them. Know thy self, know thy enemy. – Sun Tzu , The Art of War This is a book about balance: What disrupts it, what restores it, and how to keep it going. It is also a story, and like any story, it has a cast of characters. Some are friends and fellow travelers. Some are enemies. In the pages of this book you will come to know them well. But first, some introductions.   Al/Alice We are the heroes of this saga, an epic battle not only for balance but literally for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.   UnBalancer The villain in our story is the nefarious UnBalancer . UnBalancer is a fearsome and sometimes deadly force. It strives single-mindedly to unseat us, and sometimes it wins the battle – but not, as we’ll see, the war.   Balancer...