That Got Me Thinking

Anxiety, Panic, Stress? You Are Not Alone. Oct 19, 2021

We are all feeling it to some degree, and it doesn’t feel good. Yet, our attempts to resist it, struggle against it, and fight it with all our might, only serve to make our experience worse. As the saying goes, “What we resist persists.” It’s true, our emotions are a natural response to our environments – internal and external; and, yes, they will eventually pass. But at times, our excruciating discomfort feels eternal. In addition, heaped on top of our painful feelings of anxiety is a big dose of guilt and shame for not being able to fix it. Society and our quick fix mentality pressure us to “heal” in a prescribed manner and amount of time – those guaranteed three easy steps to success. And if you can’t, not only have you failed, you are a failure for not having tried hard enough to feel perfectly perfect.

Abbe Greenberg and Maggie Sarachek, the authors of, The Anxiety Sisters’ Survival Guide: How You Can Become More Hopeful, Connected, and Happy, understand this un-winnable struggle; they spent a good part of two decades buying into this quick fix maxim and relentlessly searching for the “solution” to their anxiety. Then, they accepted the reality of our emotional responses – they can’t be fixed! They can be adjusted, rewired, and ridden out with more ease, but not fixed. The Sisters realized, “We need a paradigm change because this pursuit of stopping anxiety isn’t working. And this is where we are going astray. Once we figured that part out our lives changed really profoundly and relatively quickly.” From this shift in approach, they then devised a “Secret Sauce” that we can all adopt to learn to shift the habitual responses from fighting your feelings to riding them out, just like surfing a wave.

So instead of fighting our experience, we can learn to recognize it and name it. “What we name we can tame… When we know what to call it, we can sit up and tell it to sit down.” And thus achieve a return to agency. ‘When we are in that reaction mode, that fight, flight or freeze reaction, we can’t access our frontal lobe – we are in a restrictive mode with limited options for response. We have put up walls and taken out our arsenal for protection – it’s not a creative, collaborative space for problem solving. It fosters positional thinking, and separateness. Instead of this habitual reaction, we can learn to (and practice) interrupting our automatic response and instead: we accept, breathe, calm, and soothe ourself, in all the ways we now know to handle this challenging situation of our uncomfortable emotions and very real physical experience, with all its varied responses. ‘

Knowing that this emotional and physical experience is anxiety and we are not alone is the biggest gift The Anxiety Sisters give us. To normalize and destigmatize our experience and be able to talk about the truth of what’s going on. The comfort we get from knowing that this is anxiety and that other people feel that, have that too, is immense. To know we are not alone and understand what we are feeling, and that it’s anxiety and there is support. There is nothing more valuable than being seen, heard and understood, gaining a connection and a validation that it will be ok.

The Anxiety Sisters’ Survival Guide

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How to Thrive in an Uncertain, Rapidly Changing World Oct 05, 2021

“Our anxiety is no longer a background noise.” says, Dr. Madeline Levine, New York Times bestselling author of The Price of Privilege and Teach Your Children Well. Her new book, Ready or Not: Preparing Our Kids to Thrive in an Uncertain and Rapidly Changing World, walks us through the behavior and mindset shifts needed to thrive in the new normal of modern life.

So, what’s so different about today? First of all, we are emerging from a global pandemic. On top of that, there have been dramatic sociological changes in the last 50 years – the very definition of success has morphed! Being part of the middle class: owning a home, having a steady job and raising a family, used to be the measure of success. Since that time, we’ve had a large scale bifurcation of wealth. And most importantly, as a nation, we’ve experienced a major loss of community. Post WWII, there emerged strong communities with tight bonds and shared experiences that provided security, place, and connection. This unity helped people get through even the worst of circumstances. From Victory gardens to a longstanding working class attitude that we are all in it together – everybody pulls their weight and we are going to get through and we are going to help each other get through it together. It’s been evident over the last decade that this assuring attitude has all but disappeared, and that’s stressful!

Today, we are under a constant pressure to succeed, to be successful. And the new definition of success- money, materialism, fame – solely external markers, causes a lot of stress and unremitting anxiety.

In response, we must learn to master our anxiety, to reduce stress and live more fulfilling and meaningful lives. This will require changing our misperception about the definition of success and the paths to reaching it. Change the narrative. Think critically about the things that are making you anxious. Do a deep dive and ask yourself what’s true. Evaluate your fears and take small steps toward conquering them. Spend an hour a day of down time to consolidate your experiences, relax in self-reflection, and get some sleep!

https://madelinelevine.com/

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Changing the Autism Conversation Sep 19, 2021

Autistic journalist and author Eric Garcia believes autism has been a criminally misunderstood concept, hidden in the shadows of mainstream culture and previously relegated as an outlier even within the world of disabilities. Historically misunderstood and surrounded by myths – first believed to be a form of schizophrenia, then a personal failing; autism was theorized to have been caused by an unloving mother or a detrimental vaccine. Garcia’s “aha” moment came when he realized with so much misinformation filtering down, bad policy were sure to follow.

As an autistic journalist in Washington D.C., Eric Garcia understands the relationship between misinformation and bad policy and the development of politics, systems and institutions downstream. He knows that the support systems that emerge: treatments, accommodations, or economic waivers, are a direct result of culture and of what we think of autism. From what Eric was hearing in the national conversation regarding autism, we were getting so much of it wrong. The public knowledge was filled with myths and misunderstandings. Eric knew that faulty public knowledge would lead to creating bad policies, so he hit the road. He set out to see what it was like to be autistic in America and how the myths about autism were failing autistic people as a whole.

Then, he wrote a book, We’re Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation. When we change the conversation, we change the culture, and that leads to policies that meet the needs of those in need.

We’re Not Broken

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How to Parent Better and Live a Happier Life Aug 23, 2021

The Uncomfortable Facts: “No amount of achievement, money or prestige is worth the price of lifelong vulnerability to anxiety and depression.”

Incidents of mental and emotional problems are pretty much off the charts. We are in the midst of an epidemic of anxiety and depression. We are experiencing a dramatic increase in suicides. Children and adolescents are wildly stressed and wildly under rested.

When stress hits, the mind goes out the door, no matter how smart or well prepared one is. When working under pressure, or a loss of sense of control, our brains don’t work well.

Negative language is extremely hurtful in the moment and has detrimental longterm consequences. Attempts to motivate through fear, guilt and anger backfire.

Bribing kids to meet your goals doesn’t work – Incentive to support them meeting their goals does.

Striving for perfectionism holds kids back.

If your message doesn’t land the first or second time, it’s not going to land the 20^th.

Dismissive Positivity is destructive and disrespectful, as is the Righting Reflex.

Wealthy kids are often under excessive pressure to excel and lack closeness with their parents. Therefore, they are at higher risk for anxiety and mood disorders, chemical use and abuse, self injury and certain kinds of delinquent behaviors.

Getting highly anxious or depressed in childhood changes the development in the brain; if we stop this happening we avoid mental illness presentation later in life. The most important outcome of childhood and adolescence is sculpting a healthy brain, not where one goes to college. “We want kids to be as successful as they can possibly be, but we want them to be able to enjoy their success.”

The science shows it’s safe to relax and not drive your kids. It’s not your job to make your kids turn out as something or in a certain way. You can’t force them to do something they truly don’t want to do.

Toughing it out for future rewards is a dangerous approach. Soothing builds resilience.

Your job isn’t to motivate your kids at all.

“The truth is there are many ways to be happy and successful in this world…A successful life is a life you want to have.”

What You Can do for Yourselves and Your Children to have More Successful Lives and a Happier Home:

Speak with your children versus to them. Sit next to them. Make eye contact. Create shared rituals and interests (or show interest in their interests.) Create one on one time every week!

Work with them, not on them. Ditch the carrots and the sticks.

Replace judgement with empathy. Show empathy and validate your kids’ feelings and experiences, even when you don’t agree.

Help your children foster their own sense of internal motivation. The end goal is for them to want to do well in alignment with their values and interests.

Reframe –Instead of a take it or leave it approach, ask them, “What do you think about this?” If they are upset, reflect back to them that the situation sounds challenging and ask what you can do to help.

Focus on developing agency. Autonomy and a sense of control are the factors that bolster self motivation. Autonomy, relatedness and competency support solid mental health.

Show your children you love them more than anything and express confidence that you think they can figure out what to do in their own lives. The most important element of parenting is developing a close relationship.

If you want them to be respectful treat them respectfully. Shift from manager to consultant.

Love them too much to fight about the way something is done. Support your children to develop Stress Tolerance. Teach them to calm themselves down with your help.

“Tired, stressed, discouraged, angry kids misbehave. So what’s making them tired, stressed, discouraged, or angry? Start there and the rest is much easier than you might think.

Be the Sun! “Remember that kids have a brain in their heads and want their lives to work.”

William Stixrud, PhD and Ned Johnson are the National Bestselling authors of The Self-Driven Child and their follow on communication guide: What Do You Say? How to Talk with Kids to Build Motivation, Stress Tolerance, and a Happy Home. Bill is a thriving neuropsychologist, founder of the Stixrud Group, and Ned is the test prep guru who founded PrepMatters. These two have sixty years combined experience talking with kids about their passions, challenges and frustrations. After countless hours talking with kids and figuring out how to connect with them, they’ve determined that having someone in a child’s life who listens, doesn’t judge and doesn’t tell them what to do is the most critical element for success.

What Do You Say?

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Bittersweet Grief Jul 27, 2021

It’s astounding the myriad of ways we are willing to be anything other than who we authentically are. Because we believe our genuine self is not ok, not enough, we reorganize our being and how we show up. Anything to not risk abandonment or engulfment- to be accepted, to stay safe, to be loved, to survive. These convoluted ways we shield our hearts, move off our centers, and away from our genuine beings, are at once impressive and heart wrenching. With an intentional shift to courage and steadfast inquiry, we can begin to recognize and identify what’s “not me,” so we can come back to know “me” and reclaim the miraculous majesty of our lives.

Kelly Minor PhD. is a personal transformation therapist. Her approach draws from the foundations of ACT therapy and wisdom traditions as a way of bridging conceptual knowledge toward embodied understanding. She provides space and time, a context, for consciousness to integrate. With a framework to distinguish the difference between a thought generated by the ego to protect us, from a genuine experience, we can stay in the authentic moment without allowing the well meaning ego to hijack our integrity.

We have a choice to make when we arrive in a moment of dynamic tension. With the internal narrative asking, “Will I be loved? Will I be safe?” we can learn to rest in a relaxed state without forcing or striving toward an acceptable response rising from a habitual pattern of non-authentic action and reaction. We can choose to trust ourself as our own authority. Instead of running from, we can do a u-turn, stay with self, shifting our questions to, “What is the nature of this? What am I afraid of?” When we choose to do a radical turnaround, engaging in gentle and intimate curiosity, we go more deeply into the moment rather than resisting it and spinning off ourselves. When we allow and entertain the action of genuine relating to self and others we live a more authentic, expansive, joyful, and fulfilling life.

As we lean in, instead of deserting our essence by spinning off into habitual, protective patterns of protection and control, we meet the magical being we were about to abandon and our heart breaks open. It breaks for all the time lost, all the times we fled thinking we weren’t enough. And as we determine to stay, we experience a beautiful, transformative moment of bursting enlightenment and a wave of bitter sweet grief.

Kelly Minor

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How Much is Too Much? Jul 16, 2021

Available: A memoir of Sex and Dating After a Marriage Ends, by Laura Friedman Williams

Laura’s identity had been defined by being a wife and a mother. She was the consummate PTA mom and loved it. She was busy and happy. Then, in a moment, the comfortable, certain life she’d known for 27 years evaporated.

She suddenly had a lot of questions: How do you stay true to yourself when you no longer recognize who and where you are? What would it be like to carve out my own ideal life aside from society’s dictates and expectations? Can I reliable trust my instincts now that I’ve gotten quiet enough to hear them? What kind of person will I be if I put myself first, displease others, and knowingly hurt their feelings? Can I become dependable primarily to myself and still be a good parent, friend, partner, spouse, daughter, and human being? And what on earth am I meant to do with all of this rage?

So scared of the version of herself she was becoming, she took action. She found courage in the realization she was far more terrified of that angry, bitter person that was lurking in the mirror than the terror of being vulnerable and going out on her own. Above all else, she was brave, so she opened the door and stepped out onto an unexpected path and into the unknown. She experienced and embraced an unfamiliar depth of intimacy with herself and others. And with this newfound personal freedom she gained an expanded sense of self and an unquenchable excitement about not knowing what would come next. She grew from her discomfort and became better for it – awakened, allowing, open, and available.

Available

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Making a Black Hole Visible Jul 05, 2021

“If the speed of light were infinite, all the information in space would reach me instantaneously, even if we were separated by an infinitely great distance. The knowable Universe would have no limits and would be infinitely large. Everything would be connected with everything else simultaneously. But because the speed of light is finite, there is no knowable infinity in space or time and therefore never an absolute precision. The finite nature of the speed of light thus grants us a particular freedom – only the here and now counts.”

And in this here and now, award-winning astrophysicist, Heino Falcke, inspired, organized, and led, a brilliant team of astronomers and other incredible experts, around the world, to take the first ever image of a black hole.

Lightness in the Dark: Black Holes, the Universe, and Us, is the wondrous account of this decades long journey to achieve the once assumed impossible feat of taking a photo of a black hole.

Lightness in the Dark

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The Universe is Talking. Are You Listening? Jun 21, 2021

What if this podcast was your sign?

What if you could simply choose a different story and everything in your life that wasn’t making you feel happy simply fell away? What if struggling wasn’t actually the path to reaping rewards and it turned out not to be very noble or really necessary at all? What if you chose to tell a story where you were the master of your Universe and you could gear all of your thoughts and feelings in a way that would create positive transformations in all areas of your lives?

In this new story, what if the path to fulfillment, meaning and joy – the best life possible – was simply to accept love and honor yourself where you are and to ask yourself what you need in each and every moment and then listen to the answer?

Ulla Suokko, in her practical guide to shifting your story, Signs of the Universe, invites you to play with the Universe and follow your signs to truth, peace, and freedom. You are already and always on your path. You can’t be anywhere else. So settle in and enjoy this miraculous ride. Learn to know yourself and find out what makes you feel better. Become acquainted with what you enjoy, what makes your heart sing and what energizes you. Live from a place of nurturing and love. Trade in all the seeking for a life of glorious finding.

Ulla’s inspiring TEDx talk, “Do You See the Signs of the Universe?” has been viewed almost two million times!

https://wisewomanenergetics.com/

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This is London Calling May 12, 2021

V2 rockets dropping out of the sky. Mourners, a vicar, upper crust Wimbourne types, working men with black armbands on their jackets, a greek daughter and ancient father walk down a London street. Lissa Evans’ third novel, of her loose trilogy, V for Victory takes place in the last stages of a long and grueling war that felt like it would never end, especially for Londoners.

And Evans’ novel got me thinking about secrets and intimacy and one’s ability to understand the experiences and perspectives of others when our own experience is so different and we are observing from the outside. V for Victory got me thinking about warfare, internal and external and what it’s like to emerge from the bombings.

https://lissaevans.com/

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Acceptance, Compassion and Commitment Apr 29, 2021

“Increasing your psychological flexibility is not a one-and-done issue. Like creating healthy patterns of eating, sleeping, and exercising, it’s a one-day-at-a-time issue, and there is no better way to groove a daily habit of improvement than to keep a daily journal while you learn.” – says, Steven C. Hayes, PhD. originator of ACT

Dr. Diana Hill and Dr. Debbie Sorensen, cohosts of the Psychologists Off the Clock podcast and coauthors of ACT Daily Journal, lead you on the 8 week journey to get unstuck and live fully with Acceptance & Commitment Therapy. “Humans yearn for connection and belonging and our conceptualized self-stories prevent us from learning, experiencing intimacy and seeing our part in a greater whole.” – Dr. Diana Hill. With the daily journal as your guide, you will practice opening up, and the more you open up, the more freedom you will experience. And who doesn’t want more freedom? We can choose to get aligned with our values and live a life that reflects what is most meaningful to us. and this is our path to courage and fulfillment.

Blog: https://drdianahill.com/blog/

Book: https://drdianahill.com/book/

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Your Time to Thrive is Now Apr 22, 2021

Your Time to Thrive: End Burnout, Increase Well-Being, and Unlock Your Full Potential with the New Science of Microsteps. Marina Khidekel and the editors of Thrive Global want you to thrive. “Discover the revolutionary behavior change system built on microsteps – tiny actionable changes that are too small to fail.” Khidekel writes, “With minimal time and effort, you can seamlessly integrate Microsteps into your days. And over time, the results can add up to a very big deal indeed.”

Ask yourself if you are ready to live the life you want rather than settle for the lifestyle you’ve created through unintentional habits. You can create meaningful sustainable change and unlock your greatest potential by adopting these small, science based, actions that will improve your physical health, mental resilience and strengthen your relationships and productivity. We all know we should get a good night’s sleep, eat well, get some exercise in our day, hydrate, and get off our phones, but knowing something and actually taking action to make a change can have a huge canyon of dissonance lying between the two intentions. Microsteps help you bridge the gap, simply, easily and quickly. Life can be better with just a few micro shifts in behavior.

Arianna Huffington, founder of Thrive Global, says, “Use this book to thrive in the new normal, one Microstep at a time.” It’s a new normal, but with the help of Marina Khidekel and the editors of Thrive Global, We’ve Got This!

Your Time to Thrive

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The Human Brain from Sea Sponge to CRISPR Apr 06, 2021

Our brains, a masterpiece of complexity or the result of a compilation of random outcroppings? Natural selection, fire, language, survival, community, creative expression and sunlight. Driven by climate change, saved by our ability to adapt and survive on a diverse diet. Neuroscience researcher, physician, and journalist Bret Stetka muses, “Evolution is not a progression toward complexity or intelligence with humans in the lead. It’s all of us doing the best we can in our given situation.”

Santiago Ramon Y Cajal posits, “The brain is a world consisting of a number of unexplored continents and great stretches of unknown territory.” Those continents and territories are brought into sharper focus in Stetka’s new book, A History of the Human Brain: From Sea Sponge to CRISPR, How Our Brain Evolved. Where he deftly explores the evolution of our brain, what it looks like today and how our current societal values and behaviors will influence our brains’ adaption in the future.

Single cells, sea sponges, apes, chimpanzees and bird brains – the mysteries unraveled and revealed. Steka reminds us that for the first time in history we will be able to artificially evolve our genetic code with precision, so it may be an opportune time to do our best to understand where we started and how we got here.

Bret Stetka

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How is Your Spiritual Odyssey Going? Mar 15, 2021

Turns out being fully human, maximizing our full potential and opening ourselves up enough to capitalize on the benefits of the full experience of a glorious life can be a daunting job – full of vulnerability, uncomfortable realizations and awkward pauses.

Psychologist, minister, and accomplished author Rollo May spent his life observing and reflecting on the sources of depression, anxiety, loneliness and powerlessness in himself and others. He then illustrated a road to authentic experience, free expression, creativity, the hidden power of personal responsibility, purposefulness and fulfilling community.

Robert H. Abzug’s Psyche and Soul in America: The Spiritual Odyssey of Rollo May is the definitive biography of the path Rollo May traveled from his youth until his death in his search for place, purpose and an authentic life. Abzug deftly chronicles May’s life, his contribution to psychotherapy through his introduction of Existential psychotherapy to American, as well as May’s creative accomplishments, including his most well known books, Love and Will, Man’s Search for Himself, Power and Innocence, and The Courage to Create.

Based on uncensored access to May, his papers and original oral interviews, Abzug adds new dimension and insight to May’s exploration of what it means to live a spiritual life, be self-reflective, be free and add value to your community.

Psyche and Soul in America

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Practicing Forgiveness Feb 06, 2021

Dr. Richard S. Balkin’s new book, Practicing Forgiveness: A Path Toward Healing, presents a new and practical model for forgiveness that guides us down the sometimes difficult path of determining when and who to forgive, when to attempt to repair a relationship with someone who has harmed us, and when to move forward from those relationships that are unhealthy for us to attempt to repair.

Balkin explains that people tend to associate forgiveness solely as an interpersonal prospect, focused on renegotiating the relationship and seeking external resolution; but sometimes, interpersonal forgiveness and reconciliation is not a viable option, and the journey of forgiveness becomes one of self healing. He reminds the reader to always consider the benefits, and the risks, of reconciliation. One needs to question if going back to the relationship is beneficial – Has the person who committed the offense or transgression changed and are they remorseful? When a dangerous or unhealthy situation persists, the challenge is to be able to recognize and accept that it is impossible to get what you want from the other person, or the relationship, and seek a path of intrapersonal forgiveness.

When interpersonal forgiveness is not a possibility, you have the option of an internalized process of forgiveness. This is an expanded definition of forgiveness based on the Forgiveness Reconciliation model, and one that allows for moving forward with a desired change. It begins with a willingness to sit with the discomfort and then head in an alternate direction from your habitual patterning.

Carrying around the emotional weight of trauma and feelings such as anger, hurt, betrayal, depression and fear takes an emotional and physical toll. It affects every aspect of our lives, our energy and that we exude to others. It puts our mental and physical health in jeopardy and can lead to addiction, depression, failed relationships, dysfunction and passive aggressive behavior. The Forgiveness Reconciliation model provides a guide to internal resolution through acceptance, processing your grief and resolving conflicted emotions. It is a roadmap to embracing forgiveness, to healing, an endeavor completely under your control that reunites you with your personal power.

Practicing Forgiveness: A Path Toward Healing

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An Illuminating Novel of Great Immediacy Jan 28, 2021

“A nuanced, powerful portrait of what it means to be caught in the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the West Bank. I found myself and my family in the pages of this beautifully written, brave, and incredibly compassionate novel. I couldn’t put it down.” Says Etaf Rum of Rebecca Sacks’ beautiful novel, City of a Thousand Gates.

In response to whether Sacks believes the conflict is irreconcilable, she posits, “You know, I have come to maybe accept what my contribution to this discussion is, and I think, I feel compelled to investigate the consequences of the current state of the conflict, and I guess its history within living memory. To investigate the consequences of these various boundaries that define life especially in the West Bank, but all over Israel and Palestine. And I think that is where I am useful and where I can illuminate something – the consequences in people’s personal lives and their, if I can use the word, souls.

And illuminate she does. City of a Thousand Gates is a special novel, Rebecca Sacks is a special writer, and this conversation is a gift.

City of a Thousand Gates

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In Conversation with Nicole Krauss Nov 24, 2020

Is there room for a boundless bond? How much of our identity and the way we relate to others is derived from the stories we tell ourselves? When does being bound provide comfort and security, like a baby perfectly swaddled, and when does it crush our soul? Who might we be if we don’t allow ourselves to be crushed by the binds of duty and expectation?

“What is the good of expansiveness if one doesn’t expand? What is the good of so much possibility if one only feels it as a widening in the chest while driving down a country road at dusk, or when, standing still in the rooms of the house when the children are shared out at their father’s, one suddenly becomes aware of a silence so pure that it raises the hairs on the back of one’s neck?” (The Husband, Krauss)

Marriage, parenthood, divorce, grief, love, power, duty, men, strong women, daughters and sons, vulnerability, weakness and strength, these are some of the themes that Nicole Krauss deftly explores in her most recent, triumphant, literary work, To Be a Man. The Guardian says, “Krauss writes like an angel.” And I agree.

https://www.nicolekrauss.com/

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How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life Oct 30, 2020

Christie Tate’s life-changing, exhilarating memoir, Group, is somehow both comforting and completely unsettling at the same time. Bestselling author, Lori Gottlieb accurately describes the read as “Heartbreaking and hilarious, surprising and redemptive.”

Christie Tate generously takes us along on her wild ride to building the bridges to intimacy. She tells us, “Before Group I thought I was doing a really good job of containing myself.” She didn’t go home and cry; instead, she ate 12 apples after dinner. She didn’t feel entitled to say no, so she lived a life devoid of intimacy, ghosting, feeling lonely, often resentful and not so slowly burning herself out to the point of hoping someone might put a bullet in her head. Luckily for the benefit of us all, she chose a braver path. She determined to change her life and the way that she related to every single person in it, including herself – all the fundamental aspects of everyday life: eating, sleeping and having sex. Each session was an experimental laboratory exploring what wasn’t working and what was a better way to live. “It felt so unsafe and so scary to go to these deep dark places.” But go she did!

She’d grown up with the golden rule that children should be quiet and self contained. Intense feelings were met with eye-rolls at the drama and risk of emotional expression. In Group the golden rules were very different. Christie learned, “If you are going to rage, it might take your full body and it might take a really long time and you might have to do it more than once.” She’d been stuffing her feelings for 25 years, it made sense there was going to be some combustion when they began to be expressed.

With these new rules came new questions and challenges. What does it mean to keep showing up and when is it time to leave a relationship? The answer to this came painstakingly slowly – “Show up long enough to be able to sort through what is mine, what is a growth edge and what is unacceptable behavior.” It doesn’t mean you have to stay with every fool and continue to collude in unacceptable treatment and behavior, but you’ve got to keep showing up to ask the question and hear the answer. After almost two decades of Group, she still has to figure it out in many aspects of her life on a regular basis. “I can’t cut and run before I understand what from my past is driving me, where is my voice, my self-esteem. It takes a village for her to live her full life and that village is Group.

https://christietate.com/about/

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An Owner’s Manual for Mental Illness and Mental Health Oct 20, 2020

“I’m not just bipolar” says Terri Cheney, New York Times bestselling author of Manic and writer for Psychology Today. Her new memoir, Modern Madness: An Owner’s Manual enlightens us all on what it’s like to live a life with mental illness, mania, depression and the threat of suicide as companions. “I’ve always been a watcher, so I can watch from the outside how other people behave so I can sort of normalize my own response and act the way that they do.” And this ability served her well as she spent a good part of her life hiding the depression and the mania. Then, she gained the grace and strength to see what happens when we are willing to recognize, accept and own our reality. Authenticity became her benchmark and making people a little uncomfortable was something she’d rather do than have them be mourners at her funeral.

Bipolar disorder is mysterious and frightening. It is extremely challenging to get an accurate diagnosis – it can often take a decade. Cheney tells us, “It takes everything you’ve got to see yourself sliding into depression and catch yourself before you get to the point of suicidality. The ability to name it as depression talking, separates with a sliver the opportunity not to lose oneself into the emotion, to be able to analyze and take action – especially if one experiences rapid cycling.” Owning it goes beyond acceptance it almost goes to a point of celebration because there are elements of bipolar disorder that have served her well: creativity, empathy, intelligence, and humility stand alongside multiple attempts of suicide. She is fragile and as strong as steel feeling the pain at a technicolor level when in the depths of depression or the height of mania.

Cheney hopes in writing this book that there will be less stigma and more understanding and compassion around the issue of mental illness. And she hopes we will all learn to abide by her golden rule – Hold your tongue and stop trying to fix it. The last thing anyone wants is to be fixed out of their feeling. Sit down with me and ask me – “Tell me where it hurts?” Not judging, we can’t do what you are advising anyway. And then listen. Being heard lets some of the darkness and despair out of the person… An astonishingly effective, simple technique.

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Managing Protein Intake is the Key to Weight Loss and Gain Sep 04, 2020

“We become overweight because our appetite for protein is stronger than our ability to limit fat and carb intake. So when protein is diluted by fats and carbs, as it is in ultra processed foods, our appetite for it overwhelms the mechanisms that normally would tell us to stop eating fats and carbs. As a result, we eat more than we should, more than is good for us. ” Eat Like the Animals: What Nature Teaches Us About the Science of Healthy Eating.

This revolutionary book by David Raubenheimer PhD and Stephen J. Simpson, PhD will change everything you think about how to actually lose weight. They began their scientific journey studying the eating habits of locusts and followed the flow of the story to find the answers to the human obesity epidemic. And in the process, the true mechanics of successful dieting were finally revealed. The power of proteins had been hiding in plain sight all along.

Now, by understanding your innate biology and the primary drive to hit your optimum protein target, you will be empowered to shift your diet and have your biology work for you rather than against you. Reproduction optimization, menopause and longevity are all governed by the levels protein intake. Mice produced more offspring on a low carb diet but were healthier and lived longer with higher carbs and weight gain. Aging is influenced by the ratio of protein to carbs consumed. From a worm, or a fruit fly, to a human, the rate at which we age, disease and weight gain are all influenced powerfully by the protein ratio dialed up or down.

Once we understand the mechanics that drive our appetites and our biology, and recognize the Dorito is a decoy, all of us can easily tweek our diets to lose weight and find health. We can make small adjustments to deal with protein turnover, adjusting protein targets and eating to satisfy rather than succumb to our ever growing bodies and protein cravings.

“We like other animals have this exquisite appetite system.” In an appropriate eating environment, our bodies will tell us what to eat and how much. The five appetites that naturally drive us, are all built in to ensure we get the proper amounts of protein, fat, carbohydrates, sodium and calcium. We’ve just built a food environment that hacks this system and works for the industrialized food industry rather than working for our balanced weight and health. We then get tricked and trapped in our own biology. However, the solution is simple and elegant and exists inside every living thing.

https://www.sydney.edu.au/charles-perkins-centre/

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The Dangers of Grandstanding Jul 09, 2020

Where have all the centrists gone and how to we get them back? False accusations, outrage, shaming and moral grandstanding are playing out on all of today’s stages: Democratic, Republican, Libertarian. Conservatives and liberals alike are ruthlessly vying for the microphone and the spotlight on center stage. And these grandstanders share a singular goal; they are all seeking the moral high ground for elevated status through righteousness and elevated moral talk. They are grandstanding and dangerously eliminating the framework for an actual constructive exchange of ideas and perspectives to take place. Enforcing a position of political correctness on both sides of the aisle to maintain in-group status is stifling authentic opinion and resulting in explosive tirades and condemnation of any alternative view.

Grandstanding has gotten dangerously out of control, reaching an unprecedented level on social media and beyond. So much so, that a substantial, and frightening, percent of the population think the country would be better off if a large number of people on the other side of their convictions just died. This is not democracy at its best.

Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke tackle this ballooning phenomena of grandstanding in their new book, Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk and discuss the urgency to recognize it for what it is and pay attention to its abuse, who benefits and who loses from its abuse. This book is dedicated to the centrists among us with the hope that centrists will take heart at this diagnosis of what’s gone wrong and check back into valuable moral discussions. Those who have been pushed out of public discourse by grandstanders and been attacked when they’ve express any doubt about what the grandstanders see as the morally pure position are enthusiastically invited to rejoin the conversation. Tosi and Warmke hope to refocus the spotlight on those individuals who understand the value of moral talk for its own purposes rather than those speakers whose singular goal is to raise their personal status.

We need to recognize grandstanding for what it is and then simply turn away rather than reward the speaker with our lingering attention. Centrists unite, re-engage and retake the stage, the hallways and the kitchen tables.

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Is the Food You are Eating Making You Sick? Apr 08, 2020

And can the right foods heal you? Dr. Neil D. Barnard believes, “Hidden in everyday foods are the causes of a surprising range of health problems: infertility, weight gain, breast and prostrate cancer, thyroid problems, low moods, and hot flashes.”

What you eat matters. Your body is an interdependent system. It cannot do its job if it is not provided with the essential nutrients to do so. Barnard tells us, “It becomes more and more clear why we have epidemics of disease because people are not getting the nutrients that they need.” And, “Many of our desires for food are really dictated by addictions rather than what our bodies actually need.” When we get back into balance with food choices many diagnoses may melt away.

Results come very quickly with a change of diet. Dr. Barnard’s new book, Your Body In Balance: The New Science of Food, Hormones, and Health Illustrates the new understanding surrounding the role of hormones in the body and how various food choices affect them and lead to a variety of potential symptoms.

I know a neighbor who thrives on a raw food diet, her husband looks like he could use a double cheese burger. At home, we’ve got two vegetarians and two carnivores. A friend of mine swears by the Keto diet and another had to call it quits due to constant headaches and the inclination to faint. I’ve found a strict Pitta diet from the Ayurvedic tradition can work miracles on my health in times of stress, emotionally and physically. Yes, what we eat matters.

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The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia Feb 06, 2020

“Part crime narrative and part soul-searching memoir, Emma Copley Eisenberg’s The Third Rainbow Girl has so much wisdom to offer. It’s about the corrosiveness of preconceived notions, and about how trauma ripples through cultures and generations, and about finding connections in others and strength in oneself. Rich in detail and sensitivity and intelligence and honesty, this is a book you won’t want to put down, one that will stay with you for a long time.” – Robert Kolker, New York Times bestselling author of Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery.

Elizabeth Loftus, “The degree to which a witness is convinced of the truth of their memories is not always an accurate predictor of their actual basis of fact.”

Emma Copely Eisenberg, “I dismantled every system to make a new world, but then I had to live in it.”

The Third Rainbow Girl

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The Turn On Jan 24, 2020

We want to be captivated! And Oprah, Tiffany Haddish, Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep and Apple’s Tim Cook have what it takes to do just that. They wittingly, or unwittingly, offer up the 8 qualities that invariably endear us:

Captivation and Hope
Authenticity and Relatability
Protectiveness and Reliability
Perceptiveness and Compassion

Steven Goldstein, television producer, Congressional lawyer, leader of state and national civil rights organizations, and communications advisor to corporate and political leaders, has unraveled the lifelong mystery of what it takes to be likable. And in his compelling new book, The Turn On: How the Powerful Make Us Like Them -From Washington to Wall Street to Hollywood, he shares those secrets. He tells us what the most elite image makers know – even if they don’t know they know it. Why is it we like Ellen DeGeneres and Morgan Freeman, but Gwyneth Paltrow can get under our skin? Why do we admire Warren Buffett, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Google’s Sundar Pichai rather than envy their wealth?

Steven assures us, with the right attention likability can be produced. We too can become likable.

The Turn On

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The Missing Link for Getting the Life You Really Want Jan 16, 2020

What’s my purpose in life? Survival, self-expression, creativity, exploration, love, enjoyment, connection – the “whys” of our lives. Humanity.

At the core, we all share similar struggles regardless of our circumstance. We all want to communicate, to relate, to be close. We come into the world ready to connect. “It’s our innate destiny, but so much depends on how that goes.” The success of our early relational programming depends on how able our initial caregivers are in their ability to authentically attach, be reliable, and emotionally available. We need them to be emotionally present so that we may learn to do the same.

As Ronald J. Frederick, so adeptly explains in his new book, Loving Like You Mean It: Use the Power of Emotional Mindfulness to Transform Your Relationships, all of our earliest caregiver experiences program our relational software; they are coded into our brains, stored implicitly and then we move forward into the world running on this software. As adults, if we haven’t downloaded the most effective systems, our challenge lies in our ability to free ourselves up from the ways we’ve been shaped and our nervous systems have been shaped, by growing our capacity to connect. And the missing link in this psychological transformation is rewiring our habitual, emotional responses. Moving from insight to change with the reward of the emergence of our true self, our best self.

We aren’t screwed up. “Our brain was wired in a certain way and through new experience we re-work wiring so our whole self can come on line.” We’ve been taught to ignore, push past and suppress our feelings and emotional cues. So we learn to suppress, not to process and ignore until we no longer even register the internal experience.

We change and we grow through our emotional relational experience. “The trick lies in getting out of our heads, away from the intellectual understanding and contemplation and into being present with self and therapist emotionally, and that’s where things happen. Disentangling the nervous system from early wiring, so I can be present with myself and those I love.”

“We are all wired to heal, we are all wired to transform, we are all wired to actualize.… We just need the right help for that to be able to happen. We can learn to abide our feelings, be with them and let them move through us… Learning to lean into our distress is actually what works to decrease it.”

“The core of our work is to free ourselves from a fear that is no longer warranted and reclaim our innate emotional capabilities so that we can have better relationships.” And Frederick leads the way.

https://www.cfcliving.com/

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Time to Think Dec 10, 2019

Emily Dickinson was not a recluse by any means; she just needed some time to think. In Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life, award-winning author Marta McDowell illuminates Dickinson’s deep passion for the rich life of nature and how it inspired and informed her writing. Exploring the relationship between Dickinson’s social life and her immense love of gardening and the outdoors, McDowell reveals the authentic Dickinson and grows our appreciation of this incredible poet and vibrant woman.

Emily Dickinson is one of America’s most celebrated and enigmatic figures. Miss Dickinson was especially active and outgoing in her youth. She loved nothing more than setting out for an adventure with her beloved dog, Carlo, “They are better than Beings-because they know-but do not tell.”

She had deep relationships with nature and the people she held close in her life. She appreciated their essence and their beauty. Emily was experiencing the heaven that exists on earth – eyes, ears, senses and heart open “So instead of getting to heaven, at last- I’m going all along.” She intuitively understood the connection of heaven to earth and writes about it in her poem of the poppy and the sun. And she could see connections that most of us miss, “The pink lily you gave loo, has had five flowers sine I came, and has more buds. The girls think it my influence.“

She was intrigued by the intensity of personal connection, “Is not an absent friend as mysterious as a bulb in the ground, and is not a bulb the most captivating floral form.” And She was also playful, witty and funny beyond compare,“I send you a little Antidote to the love of others -Whenever you feel yourselves enticed, cling to it’s Admonition.” Forget me nots and bleeding hearts. Ahe mimicked in warm jest some writers of the day including Robert Burns with the morning glory.

Mostly, Emily Dickinson was reverent. After the publication of her poems in the 1890s, a newspaper reviewer speaks of the real reverence that underlies the most startling of her utterances. She loved words and she loved life. Her poems relating to nature provide a pathway into lost relationship with our physical world. She took plants with her when she traveled. “as for my sweet flowers. I shall know each leaf and every bud that bursts, while I am from home.” She knew each leaf and bud that burst.

Marta McDowell is the author of Beatrix Potter’s Gardening life, The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder and All the Presidents; Gardens. In 2018 Marta was the Emily Dickinson Museum’s Gardener in Residence and the 2019 winner of the Garden Club of America’s award for outstanding literary achievement.

https://www.martamcdowell.com/

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The Insanity of the First Drink Nov 06, 2019

Bill Wilson had been a drunk. He became a visionary with a singular mission. He believed in two unwavering propositions. First, a true alcoholic has no power over the calling of the first drink ;and second, one has to have a vital spiritual experience so they are able to successfully erect a barrier between them and having that first drink. His is a fascinating and miraculous tale, uplifting and inspiring. Wilson was on a crusade to get people sober all across America, and on that quest he became responsible for starting one of the greatest spiritual movements of the twentieth century.

And author/detective, William H. Schaberg has written the definitive history of this incredible visionary and the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous in his book, Writing the Big Book: The Creation of A. A.. Wilson’s Big Book was published in April 1939, the 12 steps put down in print. Schaberg traces the evolution and the story of creating Alcoholics Anonymous – the incredible spiritual movement that has helped millions of people survive and better their lives. .

The 1930s was a challenging time, mid depression, alcoholism was thought to be a problem for the weak, and temperance and prohibition were the thinking of the day. In general, drunks were considered pretty hopeless. But Wilson had hope and unwavering determination. His trials and tribulations would create a movement that would save millions of lives, and it plays like a Netflix original series. The hard won success of the book and its message ultimately exploded with over 37 million copies sold and a spiritual movement that has swept the Nation and the world.

http://www.writingthebigbook.com/

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The Professionalism of Youth Sports Oct 25, 2019

When Nike and our culture tell us 2^nd place is the first looser, we’ve got a problem of epic proportion. And one that is especially devastating for our young Olympic hopefuls. By defining success only in terms of wins, we create a community full of people, including children, who feel like losers, living unfulfilled lives more prone to anxiety and depression.

Woven tightly into this mindset of the only worthy level of achievement being first place is the professionalism of youth sports. The post 1990s model opening the Olympics up to professionals shifted the focus of sport from growing and developing one’s ability to the need to monetize. With that shift the intrinsic enjoyment of athleticism was lost and a singular focus on the potential for future extrinsic value was developed.

There is however a shining exception to this unfortunate rule, and New York Times sports writer, Karen Crouse, exquisitely depicts it in her gem of a book, Norwich: One Tiny Vermont Town’s Secret to Happiness and Excellence. In Norwich, Vermont, kids are taught to enjoy their sport, be coachable and develop lifelong friendships. Life skills are acquired as the result of their participation. In Karen’s words, “This is not a town that values participatory ribbons, but at the same time they see that there is more to a sport than the ribbons… It’s about the community and the self-improvement that you foster.”

Norwich develops in its children a pride of place that really knew no egotistical boundaries. A larger community exists to serve as a social safety net. Every child in Norwich is seen as a child of the town and worth rooting for. Kids are not only valued for their performance in a sport but, first and foremost, for being a part of the larger community, with an unshakeable sense that what they are good at is what they do, not who they are.

And, Norwich’s most successful Olympic athlete, mogul skier, Hannah Carney, had this community safety net to catch her when her third place at the Olympics felt like a broken heart while defending her prior first place win from 2010. Hearing Hannah’s sentiment that she felt like a failure who had let herself and her town down, the town galvanized, put on a parade and celebrated Hannah and her performance. They celebrated all that she’d accomplished to make them proud and demonstrated the values they cherish most.

Karen Crouse

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Words, War, Magic, Fatherhood and maybe Truth Oct 16, 2019

“Something that was brought home with me from that war, found its way into my life ever-after, has stayed there, and now has wormed its way into my Dad’s Maybe Book.” Tim O’Brien, best selling author of The Things They Carried, was determined to be a good father, focused and present. Intent to leave some love through stories and a little bit of knowledge to his precious little boys, he began writing love letters, validating the experience of parenthood and motivating other to leave their voice for their children.

A magician and a novelist, Tim is fascinated with the mysteries of magic and life: who we are, why we do what we do and where we go after we die. He loves how as a novelist he is doing a kind of magic, not slight of hand but slight of mind -disentangling the threads of reality, sorting out what’s illusion from some sort of factual experience.

He understands the fickle nature of memory and the dangers of absolutism. In relation to the aftermath of intense moments in fatherhood and Vietnam, Tim O’Brien writes, “When something so excruciatingly present became so shockingly absent.”

On war and killing, he hopes for his boys a life of outrage. He wants them to be thinking, moral human beings that are unwilling to kill people for less than greatreasons. Of Vietnam he says, “Our country was divided and the best that you can say about Vietnam was that certain blood was shed for uncertain reasons.”

O’Brien believes stories die of dullness, that writing is an intense listening, an intense dreaming as the fingers try to catch up in putting down language. The challenge and the goal is to trust the story as it unfolds and convey it in the hopes that it will mean something to the reader – to their heart, stomach and nape of the neck, tear ducts, laughter ducts and appeal to the wholeness of the human being. The opposite of explanation which, as in magic, diminishes by making it explicable.

“As a writer you just kind of brush up against people. They don’t always take what you write as you think they may.” O’Brien reminds us that truth is an elusive creature in fact and fiction, “Of course, the truths of an invented story are rarely verifiable by empirical means. We cannot prove for instance that Thumbelina was a young lady whose stature was, to put it kindly, on the smallish side.” And truth in fact is at times, at best, a maybe.

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Three Women Sep 18, 2019

Oprah Winfrey says of Lisa Taddeo’s, new book, “An instant feminist classic…Utterly engrossing…Game-changing.” Dave Eggers applauds Taddeo’s depiction of these women, “Taddeo’s beautifully written and unflinching portraits of desire allow her protagonists to be wholly human and wholly, blessedly complex…” And finally, Esther Perel’s praises Lisa’s mastery of this essential, often unspoken, conversation, “Three Women offers a fascinating excavation of the intricacies of love and desire where they conspire and where they conflict.”

Three Women is a profoundly impactful non-fiction literary triumph with its sights set on unraveling the complexities of desire. True life stories of how desire thrills us, torments us and controls our thoughts. Desire, loyal to its polarizing form, wrecks lives and makes life worth living. This journalistic wonder is an unashamed and generous exploration of women, desire, passion, sexuality, power and the narratives that define, confine and free us.

Lisa Taddeo set out to register the heat and sting of female want, so that men and other women might more easily comprehend before they condemn. And she’s done so exquisitely – with a passion and integrity that shines through every page.

Three Women

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Social Mobility and The Years That Matter Most Sep 05, 2019

The super wealthy Americans of the late 19th and early 20th century, Carnegie, Rockefeller and the like, all started out without much; but through grit, perseverance and lucky breaks, they amassed incredible wealth. This has always been part of our great American mythos – the Gold Rush, heading West, or being an oil Wild Cat. Through pluck and ingenuity, fortunes were made. However, this shifted around the time of WWII with a turn toward the knowledge economy. Then when mobility happened, it happened through higher education. Now, we are shifting once again. And the question on the minds of those concerned with the health of our democracy and the growth of our Nation’s economy is whether higher education will remain the best path forward.

Journalist, and New York Times bestselling author, Paul Tough has been grappling with the question of social mobility for a long time. He is drawn to understand the path for success for young Americans and the impact the process of mobility has on an individual’s life.

Prior to WWII, college was for rich kids. The GI bill changed this. Farm boys from Iowa, street kids from New York. began seeking higher education in droves when this opportunity opened up, and it changed their lives and the country. Education became the golden ticket for social mobility. In Paul Tough’s new book, The Years That Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us, he sets out to unravel the current mysteries of American higher education. What he finds is full of surprises; it is at once disheartening, enlightening and inspiring.

Tough discovers higher education has become both a pathway and a barrier. For the individual, college still works as this engine of social mobility and can provide a future beyond imagination. But for the nation as a whole, as a system, it is not working.

As confusing as it was to Tocqueville, mobility has always been the cornerstone of our democracy, In America, the rich people aren’t always rich and the poor people aren’t always poor; and for the good of us all, we need to keep it that way.

https://www.paultough.com/

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What to Wear Aug 01, 2019

Does what we choose to wear matter? Are we judged on our appearance? Does it make sense to put form over function? And what’s with three-piece suits and uncomfortable shoes?

Elizabeth Bean Smith, founder of Wardrobe Therapy has some answers to the age old question, “Does the suit make the man?” And does the dress, skirt, jumpsuit, suit, heels, flats, t-shirt, blouse, flares, trousers, jeans, flat front, pleated, cropped, side slit, wrapped…make the woman?

Elizabeth, a Fashion Institute of Technology graduate, founded Wardrobe Therapy in 2006. She left a successful career in Fortune 500 corporate retail and upscale boutique management to launch a dream that has in turn allowed others to realize theirs by helping them use fashion as a tool to brand themselves and their corporations.

https://www.wardrobetherapyllc.com/

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What School Could Be Jul 10, 2019

Everyone agrees our current model of education is broken. And Ted Dintersmith has some valuable suggestions on how to fix it. Ted set out across America to visit 50 states in one year and sound the alarm that our civil society is beginning to fracture, and we are preparing our kids for a world that no longer exists. The future is coming more quickly than we realize; we must reimagine education, and quick, if we want to be prepared.

Innovation expert and Padawan of education, Tim Dintersmith, is the author of the incredible book, “What School Could Be: Insights and Inspiration From Teachers Across America.” He is the executive producer of the acclaimed documentary “Most Likely to Succeed” and co-author of the book, “Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing our Kids for the Innovation Era.” Prior to his yearlong journey across the Country, he spent four decades excelling in the fields of technology, business and public policy.

Abraham Lincoln said, “The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation is the philosophy of the government in the next.” And the costs to society when we don’t successfully educate our children are high. Our nation already experiences alarming rates of addiction, depression, homelessness and mass incarceration.

But don’t dismay, there is reason for hope. What Ted found again and again, across the United States, surprised him. He saw innovative programs working. Kids were excited, energized, engaged, empowered and performing well on tests they hadn’t spent day in and day out preparing for. Alongside innovation, discipline problems disappeared. Children were leading in their classrooms and in their communities. Kids were thriving, and it was costing less money and benefitting society.

“Today’s children will be adults in a world where the price-performance of machine intelligence is one hundred times as powerful as today, at least.” With this truth in mind, Dintersmith challenges our educators to ask,”What will that world look like and ask of our children to succeed?” and then go about doing better things rather than focusing our attention and resources on doing (the same) things better.

Ted Dintersmith

TEDxFargo

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What is Negotiation? Jul 02, 2019

For a great many people, negotiation is a very scary prospect. Even though we negotiate every single day of our lives, formally and informally. Heck, we even negotiate with ourselves on a regular basis. You might not like it; but it’s unavoidable, so you may as well embrace the fact and learn how to reduce the stress and level up your success.

Dr. Joshua N. Weiss is a negotiation and conflict resolution expert and the co-founder of the Global Negotiation Initiative at Harvard University. He believes people have a far too narrow view of what negotiation is even though they are actually doing it everyday. It’s a life-skill fundamental to our everyday existence; and yet, most of us have never learnt to negotiate properly and often don’t even recognize when we are in the midst of it.

The proper mindset is critical when negotiating. Weiss tells us, “It’s not a destination, it’s a journey.” And one it’s best to be prepared for. Planning is key, although it rarely goes as you’ve imagined. It isn’t always easy and you don’t have control over all of the elements. This is what makes it uncomfortable for people. Weiss’s advice, “You have to operate in a sea of uncertainty and chaos, but chaos in a good way… The ability to adapt is a critical element.” His three keys to effective negotiation: Remember negotiation is broader than you think, maintain self-awareness, and never forget that everyone involved in the negotiation is in it together.

Elements of a successful approach include, expanding the pie and mastering the use of open ended questions. Get people to ask what you mean and what you are interested in. And find out what the others involved are interested in. Weiss reminds us, “It’s an interdependent process, so you can’t just stick to your prepared plan. The other side isn’t reading your playbook…It’s a bit like playing chess.”

Weiss is confident there are qualities that make an effective negotiator, and they can be learned. Be patient. Ask good questions and listen. Find a way to work with one another, and be clear on your objective as you stay attuned to the other person. You need their participation or you wouldn’t be negotiating. They are your problem solving partner, not the problem. “The issues are the problems, not the disagreements regarding them…Listen through the criticism to understand what they are trying to get at.”

Wisdom from Weiss: In the realm of negotiation trying to be something you’re not won’t work. When you are thoughtful and prepared, centered and confident, you don’t have to feel worried about being vulnerable or worry about tricks and tactics because they won’t be effective. Confidence is key, so you won’t be seen as someone who is easy to manipulate.

The biggest mistakes people make are making assumptions and bringing their own biased perception to the process. This is the biggest impediment to success. Weiss, “Information is the currency in negotiation, the more you have the better off you are.” There is a distinct difference between hearing and listening, and between debate mode and dialog mode. Rather than looking for holes in the other side’s argument to find tactical advantages to win, the superior approach is to seek information and understand interests to get where you want to go.

A favorite quote of Weiss, – “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.” ― John F. Kennedy. And with Weiss’s guidance, we can all be fearless.

https://www.joshuanweiss.com/

Program on Negotiation, Harvard Law School

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**Change is a Destination, You’ll Need a Mode of Transportation** Jun 12, 2019
Grab your phone or computer and type in *How to Change* into Google and this is what you get: **about 10,370,000,000 results (0.99 seconds)**

Ponder Cheryl Crow’s song, “A Change Would Do You Good” and David Bowie’s “Changes.” Think about the challenges of change and the ever-present fact that even when we desire it beyond all else, we fight its coming tooth and nail. Contemplate the sometimes excruciating conflict that wages, external and internal, between status quo and imagined realities and the battles we wage with ourselves and others to hold back the tides of change.

In this episode of “That Got Me Thinking,” Ellie Newman is joined by empowerment expert, Kim Fulcher. Kim is a seasoned Silicon Valley executive and serial entrepreneur. She’s the author of *Remodel Your Reality; Seven Steps to Rebalance Your Life and Reclaim Your Passion* and the creator of the Get Your Groove Back an on-demand coaching program for women. She speaks professionally about empowerment, engagement, marketing and community culture, and runs a coaching organization that specializes in helping professional women succeed in their careers.

Kim offers practical advice for clarifying what you want, getting unstuck and effectively and efficiently facilitating change. She reminds us that we can’t behave in ways that conflict with what we want and still hope for new results. She encourages us to match our behavior with the goals we are looking to bring into our lives. She defines power as what you do rather than something you have or don’t have. And if you are serious about facilitating change, you’ll need to use your power in practical ways – acquiring agency- utilizing your power intentionally to impact your life and shift it in the direction you desire.

Her advice is straight forward and achievable: To change, identify what’s working, assess what’s not working and then determine exactly what you want to have instead. There will be a number of things you will need to start doing and a similar number of things you will need to stop doing. Four simple steps will get you where you want to go: Acknowledge your Status Quo. Disrupt your current circumstance. Make adjustments toward your new destination. And lean into your new normal.

http://www.kimberlyfulcher.com/

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How Beef Changed America May 28, 2019

In 1901, more than 300 million pounds of dressed beef crossed the Atlantic. In 1902 there was a Kosher meat riot – Women smashed shop windows, poured kerosene oil on meat and stomped customers beef purchases. Between the years 1874 and 1880, barbed wired fencing use went from 10,00o to 80 million pounds. And the Dawes Act led to a decline of Indian controlled land of almost 75%. Railroads, cattle ranchers, cowboys, horses, corporate greed, industrialization, military intervention, status, corruption, food safety, blizzards, the expropriation of American Indian lands and Porterhouse steaks for all; this is the story of modern beef.

From the rise of corporate ranching, its fall to independent ranchers and their submission to the control of the Big Four slaughterhouses, this is the story of how the West was won (or stolen.) And this is the story of how the beef industry industrialized food production, kept prices low, modernized food safety and succeeded in the grandest branding campaign in history. Pun intended.

Join, Ellie Newman, host of the thought-provoking podcast, That Got Me Thinking, and historian, Joshua Specht, author of Red Meat Republic: A Hoof to Table History of How Beef Changed American. Listen in as the conversation turns to how beef conquered America and gave rise to the modern industrial food complex. “By the late nineteenth century, Americans rich and poor had come to expect high quality, fresh beef with almost every meal.”

Red Meat Republic

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Teens, Resilience and Why Your Brain Resists Change May 22, 2019

Research shows a huge part of developing resilience is having supportive people in our lives. Yet, people often struggle with the idea that they aren’t worth the effort, or anyone’s time, so believe that no one is going to be available to help. Well, psychotherapist and author, Cheryl Bradshaw is here to help and show us how we can actually, intentionally, get in our own way to create more positive outcomes by actively breaking down the barriers that keep us from living our best lives.

Through developing our resilience muscle, we can learn to tolerate some of the discomfort that comes with being human. Instead of avoiding, or speeding past all of the emotional discomfort in our lives, we are able to sit with, feel and experience the often difficult emotions that arise. We learn to choose not to run away, and that in turn builds our strength and ability to do so.

The Resilience Workbook for Teens: Activities to Help You Gain Confidence, Manage Stress, and Cultivate a Growth Mindset, along with Cheryl’s earlier book, How to Like Yourself, help us to understand direct discomfort versus indirect discomfort, rabbit holes, thought traps, good stress, bad stress and the complexities of the brain’s schemas – state dependent webs. She takes us to the “brain gym” to actively work on making new connections to fire together and wire together. We create positive new associations that are equally true – that our brains previously did not believe – those positive elements in our lives and those amazing qualities we embody, our unique abilities, talents and accomplishments, including those we all share merely from the virtue of being human.

Join us, Ellie Newman, host of the thought-provoking podcast, That Got Me Thinking, and psychotherapist and author, Cheryl Bradshaw, as the conversation turns to embracing who you are, bouncing back from adversity and achieving your full potential.

Cheryl Bradshaw

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Shedding the Shoulds May 15, 2019

Meet your guide to living your best life possible, Regan Walsh.

If you’ve been asking yourself, “Is this is all there is?” If you are living a life filled with pressure to meet everyone else’s demands. If you have lost the ability to honestly distinguish what you truly want because of all the shoulds in your life and are tired of going through your days depleted, restless and unfocused, trying to live up to external standards of the life you ought to lead, what you ought to want and what you ought to do in every moment, then get onboard for this life altering tour.

Regan Walsh is an executive coach and life coach who believes strongly in the power of instinct, optimism, and honoring your own gifts. She tells us, “It’s time to participate fully in all life has to offer.” And she answers the ever looming question, “How can we experience the one life we are given in the best life possible?” She tells us, “Your best life is one in which you proudly stake your claim on what brings you joy.” She believes that this is actually what life is all about, and she is here to guide us all to that happy and fulfilling destination.

So, if you would like to set goals with clarity, say yes with confidence and live life with passion, listen in to this thought-provoking episode of “That Got Me Thinking” with Ellie Newman and Regan Walsh, as the conversation turns to saying goodbye to guilt, resentment, shame and frustration by shedding the shoulds and uncovering the richness of your life

https://reganwalsh.com/.

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SAT Test Prep Expert Joe McGovern Lays It All on the Line May 08, 2019

Ellie Newman interviews SAT and ACT test prep expert, Joe McGovern, in this episode of That Got Me Thinking, a thoughtful and thought-provoking podcast. Listen as the conversation turns to standardized testing and college admissions. Who knew this would be the most exciting topic of the year?

The recent college admissions scandal has shone a new light onto the fairness of the process of applying to, and being accepted by, elite universities around the Nation. And it has brought a slew of new questions into our minds regarding the assessment tools used by these universities to gauge students’ preparedness and qualifications: Is there bias? Can students work hard and get a fair shot? Is the system rigged? Are the SATs and ACTs friends or foes?…And my favorite, who knows how a zero is related to a factor in a quadratic equation, and if I don’t will I fail the SAT?

Well, lucky for us, our test prep hero, Joe McGovern is here to set the record straight. He tells us, “The SAT isn’t the enemy. The College Board has a job to do.” And he believes they are doing a good job. There job is to identify the kids who have the skills, knowledge and material that it’s probably going to take to be successful in college and beyond. Joe’s job is helping these kids to have what it takes to end up on the upper end of the spectrum created from testing results. He believes the skills and knowledge that are tested for on the SAT are pretty much a corollary for what students need to succeed in college, especially in relation to English studies. And, the Mathematics portions of the exams accurately test the thinking skills that one needs to connect the material to the problem and find a creative way towards the solution to the specific problem- skills necessary in math and life. (Turns out knowing the relationship zero has to a factor isn’t quite enough.)

The SAT presents a myriad of problems to solve. And Joe’s challenge (which he finds fun and exhilarating) is to figure out with each and every unique student, how he will get this material into this kid’s head in such a way that they can produce it in the test and get a good score that accurately represents their capacity for success. People think in different ways; therefore, Joe devises successful strategies to help non-linear thinkers to sequentialize – to read, understand, calculate and come up with the correct answers . And yes, he confirms the tests are trying to trick us, but in a good way!

https://mcgoverntestprep.com/

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How Do We Change?… In Relation to Others is the Answer Apr 30, 2019

Lori Gottlieb knows what it’s like to sit with discomfort and pain, that of others and her own. She knows that our notion of the future can be just as powerful a roadblock to change as our notion of the past. She knows that change and loss travel together, and that you’ll need to figure out what the loss will be to be able to move beyond it. And she knows that finding the space between stimulus and response is where we will find the power to choose growth and freedom.

She tells us, “I want to capture the process in which humans, struggling to evolve, push against their shells until they quietly (but sometimes loudly) and slowly (but sometimes suddenly) crack open.” And that’s just what she does in her instant New York Times bestseller, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist and Our Lives Revealed (Now being developed as a television series with Eva Longoria on ABC.) Her previous bestsellers – Stick Figure: A Diary of My Former Self, and Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough.

Carl Jung said, “Who looks inside, awakes.” And Lori is looking. “One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.”

In this episode of “That Got Me Thinking” a thoughtful and thought-provoking podcast, Ellie Newman listens as Lori encourages us to take that leap of faith into our better future but to be forewarned that therapy will always take us into uncharted territory, even if we choose to preserve the status quo. “The path to peace is to call a truce with ourselves.” This is how we learn to manage the certainty of uncertainty without sabotaging ourselves and find our way to freedom.

https://lorigottlieb.com/

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Habits and Traits of Highly Sensitive People Apr 16, 2019

Are you or your child highly sensitive? Are you more aware of subtleties than others? Are you easily overwhelmed in crowds or loud and chaotic environments? Do you have a keen sense of smell? Do you cry easily and feel deeply? When you watch a violent movie scene, or hear about a medical procedure, do you feel the corresponding sensations in your body?

In this episode of “That Got Me Thinking” a thoughtful and thought-provoking podcast, Ellie Newman speaks with Dr. Ted Zeff, a leading expert on the trait of high sensitivity and author of numerous books, including, The Highly Sensitive Person’s Survival Guide. Listen as the conversation turns to what it means to be highly sensitive and how to take full advantage of this wonderful trait.

The highly sensitive person has been misunderstood for quite some time. Dr. Elaine Aron explains that in the past HSPs have been called shy, timid, inhibited, overly sensitive and introverted, but those labels completely miss the true nature of this trait. Today, the scientific community understands that the brain of a highly sensitive person (HSP) actually works differently, and 20% of the general population present this trait.

HSPs feel in deep and complex ways, are observant and detail oriented. They tend to be highly intuitive, pay close attention to what’s happening in their surroundings and have a rich inner life. Most HSPs have been told their entire lives to stop being so sensitive. But it just may be this heightened sensitivity that will save the world.

https://sensitivethemovie.com/

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Deborah Burns Unravels the Magic of the Mother-Child Bond Apr 10, 2019

Ellie Newman speaks with Deborah Burns, Media Industry Leader and author of Saturdays’ Child: A Daughter’s Memoir, in this episode of “That Got Me Thinking” a thoughtful and thought-provoking podcast. Listen as the conversation turns to the complexities of a fascinating mother-daughter relationship and the universal truths revealed.

The question Deborah has struggled with the majority of her life is, “Am I enough, because I’m not that?” “So if I’m not that, and that’s what I’m supposed to be, she must be disappointed in me and that’s why she’s so elusive and if only I looked more like her, then she would really love me?” Realizing those are the kinds of things that get tangled up because of the unrelenting power of the word enough.

Looking through the window of the relationship with her mother and the intertwined stories of her family members, Deborah unravels the myths of her unconventional, glamorous, bigger than life mother. Asking, “Is it me? Is it her? Is this normal? Is it right?”

As a child, Deborah would sit on the long orange Chesterfield sofa in her living room, positioned so she had a sight line straight to her mother’s bedroom and when the door finally opened, so did her world. Deborah tells us, “My naturally intuitive nature honed razor sharp at her feet helped me to thrive in the grey uncertainty of her love.” Now, as a successful mother, career woman and author, the question on which Deborah has honed her razor sharp attention is, “Do you make your child feel like a priority and fully loved regardless of how much time you are able to spend with them?”

https://skirtingtherules.com/about/

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Discover the Power of Conversation with Celeste Headlee Apr 02, 2019

Ellie Newman interviews award-winning journalist and conversation expert Celeste Headlee in this episode of “That Got Me Thinking” a thoughtful and thought-provoking podcast. Listen as the conversation turns to how to have conversations that matter.

Celeste Headlee’s TEDx Talk sharing 10 ways to have a better conversation has over 20 million views to date. Through her work, she has learned the true power of conversation and its ability to both bridge gaps or deepen wounds, and she sheds a much needed light on the lost and essential art of conversation. Celeste provides simple conversation hacks to lessen conflict and increase empathy and connection.

As human beings, the number one need we have is belonging. It trumps everything else including spirituality, morality and all kinds of other needs. Once we are fed and sheltered, to belong to a community and have social relationships is what matters most. So imagine the effects of deteriorating relationships, loneliness and social isolation due to a lack of quality conversation. The UK has gone so far as to appoint a Minister of Loneliness, since the consequences of loneliness are equal to smoking 12 cigarettes a day or being grossly obese, degrading your internal organs and taking years off your life.

Celeste tells us, “People seem to be making a virtue out of not listening to people they disagree with…Listening to someone doesn’t mean agreeing with them. The purpose of listening is to understand not endorse.” And, “Human beings work best together. We are a collective intelligence, not an individual intelligence. So improving the way we talk and listen is going to make the world better.”

You are missing out if you are not listening to other people’s stories. Intrigue, murder, love, heartbreak and more are sitting right next to you. So, in Celeste’s words, “Start listening and prepare to be amazed.”

http://www.celesteheadlee.com

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Skills for a Better Divorce and a New Path Forward with Susan Guthrie Mar 26, 2019

Join host Ellie Newman as she interviews thought leaders across the globe in the thought provoking podcast, That Got Me Thinking. In this episode Ellie is joined by litigator, divorce mediator and Breaking Free: A Modern Divorce Podcast host, Susan Guthrie. Listen as the conversation turns to mediation and the skills needed to stay together or successfully break apart.

Susan Guthrie, Esq. with Rebecca Zung, Esq., is the host of a fresh inspirational podcast for anyone contemplating divorce, going through divorce, or healing from divorce. And she is changing the face of divorce. She tells us, “It ain’t your momma’s divorce no more, and you can move forward in a better way.”

Whether it be self-advocacy or negotiating skills, being supported and building up self-esteem and empowerment to create a level playing field for negotiations, and dealing with the fears around finance and divorce. Through mediation you are coming to the table moe confident to be able to be successful and make good decisions.

Susan Guthrie encourages clients to “Play out the movie.” Playing out different scenarios to see how it may work for you and discover possible solutions to achieve what you want to achieve for the future. Avoiding agreements that don’t have true foundation because they weren’t built on mutual understanding- thereby deteriorating the process and the relationship. You want an agreement you can both live up to, building up trust and integrity within the relationship rather than perpetuating the deterioration.

In Susan’s words, “You can put this all behind you. You don’t need lawyers and mediators to run your life or be a part of your life on an ongoing thing. You can do the work in the process and move forward.” And Susan shows us how. She is truly transforming people’s options and the experience of divorce.

Divorce in a Better Way

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Tal Ben-Shahar and his Short Cuts to Happiness Mar 08, 2019

Would you like to be happier? What are the obstacles that keep you from the happiness you deserve? Where does happiness live and how do you find the address and move in?

The first step to finding happiness is probably understanding the misconceptions that abound. Then we can get down to business: accept painful emotions, focus on quality relationships, exercise, show gratitude and simplify our lives.

Tal Ben-Shahar is a happiness expert. He is the New York Times-bestselling author of Happier and Choose the Life You Want. He taught two of the three most popular courses at Harvard, “Positive Psychology” and “The Psychology of Leadership.” He knows happiness, and he understands well the troubling paradox. Those actively pursuing happiness and thinking about it consciously tend to be less happy. Yet research shows increased levels of happiness has benefits for being healthier, more creative, experiencing better relationships and making our time here on earth a heck of a lot more enjoyable. So, maybe the answer is found in how we are thinking about it and the manner with which we choose to pursue it. We can actively seek and pursue happiness, we just need to do it in indirect ways. And, luckily for all of us, these indirect ways are charmingly and effectively illustrated in Tal’s new book, Short Cuts to Happiness: Life-Changing Lessons from my Barber.

http://www.talbenshahar.com/

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Marc Lesser and the Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader: Lessons from Google and a Zen Monastery Kitchen Feb 12, 2019

Today, we face so many challenging paradoxes on our individual, and collective, Hero’s Journey. Being spiritual beings in a complex physical reality can be daunting even in the best of times. So Marc Lesser, the Zen Guy, who has an MBA from NYU, Cofounder of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute and was the CEO of three successful companies, has stepped up to be our guide with lessons from his life, Google, the Tassajara Kitchen and a contemplative practice for much more than inner peace.

Trying to make sense of his father’s manic depression and understand the complex workings of our minds. Marc realized he’d been asleep in many regards, and he desired to wake up. He was inspired by Maslow’s idea that one could develop oneself to be highly self aware, emotionally intelligent, joyful and feel the full spectrum of emotions. And he set off on his Hero’s Journey to live a more conscious, authentic and evolved life.

It can be uncomfortable to recognize that our values and aspirations are not in alignment with the way we are living and that we are not realizing our full potential. We can look away, pretend, defy or we can pay attention and develop an even greater level of self-awareness and success. “In every moment you are choosing.” Marc believes, “Learning to look directly at what is, as much as possible, even when we don’t want to, is a powerful skill that challenges us, changes us and transforms our lives.”

Marc Lesser

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Gabrielle Hartley Roadmap to Making Separation and Your Life Better Apart Feb 02, 2019

Better Apart: The Radically Positive Way to Separate will transform your divorce and level-up your life. Gabrielle Hartley is an attorney, mediator, consultant and author, with Elena Brower, she gives you the roadmap for navigating all of life’s most challenging transitions. With clarity, grace and self-determination you can turn the typical trauma of divorce into a positive, life transforming experience. Looking at separation in a new light, she has developed five simple and effective steps anyone can take to maximize the experience of divorce, visualize your best possible future and then go and create it.

The way that you choose to separate has a ripple effect that impacts not only you, your partner and your immediate family, but your extended family, friendships and beyond. Learn how to take control and improve the process and outcomes for everyone.

By following Hartley’s five practical steps you can change your mindset and your life. “It’s about launching your life in a way that you may never have thought possible before.” You are setting the stage for responsiveness rather than reactivity. By learning to take care of yourself and take control of your situation, you can change the narrative of your experience from one of failure and powerless victim to an amazing experience of growth and transformation.

“Act the way you wish to think and your mindset will actually shift.” Why not make each moment as fulfilling as you can? Be your best self, rooted in who you truly are, move forward and be as happy and as whole as possible.
Better Apart will set you on the healthiest, most uplifted track, so you can spend your life living to the fullest extent imaginable.

https://gabriellehartley.com/

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Alien Life, Spaceships and Red Giants, We Are Not Alone Nov 15, 2018

Michael Wall, PhD, is a senior writer at Space.com and author of, Out There: A Scientific Guide to Alien Life, Antimatter, and Human Space Travel (For the Cosmically Curious.) And when asked about the possibility of Earth’s inhabitants venturing into infinity and beyond (assuming our Universe is flat and not spherical, that is) he offered the optimistic thought that it would definitely be possible with a single caveat, “I know we may have sublimated ourselves to virtual, or digital, meat sacks by then… forgoing our fleshy, hairy selves.” But we could do it. Which leads one to wonder, what does it means to exist.

Our Sun is halfway through its 10 billion year life cycle..We are becoming more bionic everyday. Will we become fully bionic, or upload our consciousness into digital machines? This is Us, now, but who will we become?

And are we alone? “Out There” takes us on a interstellar ride from our, not so humble, beginning to the potential end of our Universe. We travel from microbes to black holes, through inflation theory, time travel and massless particles to the privatization of the quest to find life in our Galaxy and beyond.

13.8 billion years is a lot of time, and ample opportunity, for life to get going and even spread, Fermi’s paradox questions why we haven’t yet confirmed a visitation form an alien craft, heard any signals or found alien microbes, or have we?!!!

Have we been looking for the wrong type of signal. Maybe laser flashes and radio signals are not ET’s preferred method of communication. Or, maybe they don’t care about us, or don’t want to be found. Or, just maybe, we are in constant communication. Maybe the neutrino ghost particles streaming through us all the time are actually alien communication – a trillion messages streaming through our bodies every second.

And, is it wise to draw attention to ourselves? Stephen Hawking did not think so; he believed it was irresponsible to advertise our existence to those who may be much more advanced than we are. Alien abduction and invasion, has it happened? Would we recognize “intelligent” alien life, and is it possible we are already living with it?Is the bottle neck for survival behind us or ahead? Could there be a possible shadow biosphere, multiple realities? Did we descend from Mars through Panspermia? And is The Hulk tougher than Conan the Bacterium?

www.OutThere

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Healthy Ham, Reverence and a Trip to Italy Oct 30, 2018

So what the heck does extra virgin olive oil really mean? Is it true that salt and time makes Prosciutto di Parma a healthy ham? Can it be that watching Italian lettuce grow is an amazing lesson in pride, mastery, bounty and purpose. And is a sense of connection, comfort and grounding best found in a great plate of pasta?

Mary Ann Esposito, author of Ciao Italia: My lifelong Food Adventures in Italy, has the answers we seek. Ciao Italia caps off a dozen previous cookbooks and her hosting the longest running cooking show in history…PBS’ Ciao Italia. Esposito’s book is a force of history, care and geography. It illuminates why what we put on our tables, and in our mouths, matters so very much. Written and lived with reverence, joy, humor and attention. She combines a culinary guidebook with a travel adventure leading us to a sense of belonging and helping us to answer the critical question of where we fit in. By connecting us to place, tradition and the joys of cooking, Eposito demonstrates the results of a life lived with reverence. And it just may be a deeper sense of reverence that will be our saving grace.

Through the magic of cannoli, the queen of Sicilian desserts, and a perfect San Marzano tomato, Mary Ann Esposito makes the Italian experience possible for us all.

https://www.ciaoitalia.com/

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Reignite Your Sensuality and Spark Up Your Sex Life Oct 05, 2018

Surrounded by lifestyle and self-help porn, and a constant pressure to thrust forward, our coping mechanisms utilize all our available energy. However, if we can learn to meet life where it is from an open aspect, our energy is freed up. When we are in “go mode” getting things done, we use our energy reserves and squeeze energy up and forward – clenched jaw, tight shoulders, headaches, buzzing in the head, while the lower body is parked and literally not turned on.

Listening to Michaela Boehm talk about her recent book, The Wild Woman’s Way: Unlock Your Full Potential for Pleasure, Power and Fulfillment is like a warm hug, a clever cup of tea and a sprinkle of magic dust that will make everything more than okay. Her book explores the plight of the modern woman, urging all of us to notice our “textures” and recognize our “flavors” rather than molding ourselves into someone we are not. She teaches simple techniques; so we can avoid caving into outside pressure and become who we are truly meant to be.

Michaela Boehm is convinced that sexual attraction is easy to find and shares the specifics on how to individuate and create that often elusive sexual spark on demand. Relationships, sex, pleasure activities, community, sensuality, enjoyment and even creativity are heightened.

Boehm deftly explains the simple science around losing sexual attraction when there is a loss of polarity and erotic friction, and the critical distinctions between compatible relationship and sexual attraction. Relationship is based on commonality and sameness; strong sexual attractions is based on polarities.

Through awakening our natural sensing instincts that have accounted for our survival since the beginning of mankind, we become relaxed. Merely by becoming aware of the parts of the body that are habitually clenched, based on science of energy distribution, electrical energy becomes available. Utilizing somatic movement modality that’s designed to release old patterns and trauma in the body in a non force way, allows the body to do what it’s meant to do naturally when not being blocked.

Michaela Boehm knows you can’t force being by doing and she provides the pathways to connecting with our deepest expressions of ourselves and living the most meaningful lives.

https://www.michaelaboehm.com/

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Are Migrants an Economic Powerhouse? Aug 29, 2018

Claudia Romo Edelman has spent the last 20 years successfully working on humanitarian concerns, advocating for human rights and advancing equality globally. She is a Mexican-Swiss diplomat, a special advisor to the United Nations and the founder of the We Are All Human Foundation, as well as the co-host of its podcast, Global GoalsCast.

As of late, she has rebranded herself and her mission. Her new position is what I’d call, Humanitarian Chief Marketing Officer; and she has set about spreading the truths governing migration and rebranding the image of Hispanics and Latinos in America.

Edelman likes to deal in facts; and the fact is, salsa is outselling ketchup, tortillas are the new white bread and brown is soon to be the new white. She is intent on waking the sleeping giant that is soon to be the new middle class.

Some starter facts: A person who doesn’t live in their home country of origin for more than a year is a migrant. There are approximately 255 million migrants around the world. Migrants, 5% of the population world wide, generate more than 9% of the GDP globally – that’s more than seven trillion dollars yearly! Migrants spend 85% of that income in-house and send 15% back to their home countries, producing a 600 billion dollar windfall – a huge contributor to global foreign aid.

With extensive experience as a marketer for social causes, packaging and promoting challenging and complicated products like poverty, hunger, aids as super attractive issues, she has set her sights on repackaging and promoting the reality of the incredible Hispanic community and its major acquisition power, currently not accurately represented in media and government.

Edelman is a mindshifter, shifting mindsets from perception to reality and forecasting the future, “The issue of equity, inclusion and diversity is going to be essential to America in these next years.” She is creating content and changing the narrative one story at a time. She believes humanity is a muscle – it can be exercised and trained – the world just needs to get pumping.

http://weareallhuman.org/

https://globalgoalscast.org/

https://www.claudiaromoedelman.com/

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Don’t Bring Bananas on a Boat: Fear, God and Being Beloved Aug 07, 2018

“As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote, I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.” These are the words of Herman Melville, and the mindset of teacher, sailor, attorney and historian, Maxwell Taylor Kennedy. In his latest work, Sea Change: A Man, A Boat, A Journey Home, Kennedy shares his harrowing adventures and uplifting journey of setting sail on the Valkyrien schooner to find home.

Max Kennedy was taught early on that there is no better way to prepare for emergencies than to sail head-on into as many storms as possible. His mother was ardent, “No matter how windy or stormy the weather, she taught us always to sail.” Sailing could be frightening, but it was a fear with certainty -spawning feelings of being connected, alive, and alert.

The Valkyrien schooner was a noble yet broken boat, heroic yet struggling, and maybe so was Max. “For me, the truly brave thing is not holding the wheel of a schooner as she breaks up in a storm, but committing to the intimacy of marriage and being present in the lives of my children.” So he set sail to face the pirates, broken rigging, anchors, masts and death defying storms.

Max found that stepping out of one’s comfort zone is the difficult thing. He came to understand that the search is enough, and the only way to get there is to commit to the search and commit to being yourself. He discovered certainty in connection and how it allows us to be open and really live. He realized that knowing there is someone out there who cares about us is the certainty we all need to go forward valiantly. And that we truly start to live when we open to that connection – Land ho!

As for the bananas… Everyone in New England knows it’s a terrible thing to do and one of the worst things you could ever do to a boat. “It’s bad luck and it really screws things up!”

https://www.islandportpress.com/sea-change.html

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The Evangelical World Explained Jul 10, 2018

If you have ever looked at the actions of the religious right and been stymied by the contradictions, or been brave enough and humble enough to look back at your own life and question those moments you acted in righteousness rather than with integrity, Costly Grace: An Evangelical Minister’s Rediscovery of Faith, Hope, and Love will provide you with the clarity you seek.

Rob Schenck converted from Judaism to born again Christianity as a teenager. He’d found home, purpose and community. He’d found his path to satisfying his spiritual hunger, became a minister and set about saving lost souls. Decades later he’d look back at his life and realize he’d strayed from his deepest convictions. This epiphany necessitated him leaving a position in an organization he had spent 30 years building and a universe of 250,000 supporters, an influential position in the nation’s capitol and access to those in highest office.

His personal path had paralleled that of the evangelical church. He’d gone from a humble reverend, dismissed by the power elite, to a position of power, political recognition and influence – a place that is difficult to retreat from once it’s reached. It would take a family crisis and a questioning of his espoused faith to bring him back in alignment with his core values, religious beliefs and true faith.

In his earnest attempt to do God’s work, he’d become extreme, making choices and taking actions that would later prove more difficult to justify. In hindsight, it was painfully clear, he’d been sacrificing God’s teachings to get the work done.

Costly Grace brings a message of challenge and change to Schenck’s evangelical community and an attempt at clarification and understanding to those outside.

http://tdbi.org/

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How We Bond Through Hate Jun 21, 2018

Hateful behavior has become an acceptable norm in our lives. Sally Kohn, a liberal commentator who worked at Fox News, set out to understand how we got here, and what we can do to change. She tells us in her new book, The Opposite of Hate: A Field Guide to Repairing Humanity, “We allow our condemnation of hate to be shaped by who exactly is doing the hating, and that includes giving our own hate a pass.” “Most of us think there is a problem with hate, but we don’t think it’s our problem, one that we are participating in or contributing to…We have a massive problem that no one thinks they are responsible for.”

Through her research, Kohn determined that most people don’t see themselves as hateful even while participating in the most extreme hateful behavior, including genocide. She explores the genesis of hate, its contradictions and complexities. And then she shares the glimmers of hope she’s found for humanity. The Opposite of Hate guides us through what we can do to recognize our own hateful biases, and what we can do to react differently in the face of what appears to be hateful behavior aimed right at us.

http://www.sallykohn.com/

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The Truman Show Delusion is Real and Complicated May 01, 2018

Kevin Hall is a two time cancer survivor, an Olympic and America’s Cup sailor. He’s got an amazing marriage, three children and an Ivy League degree. And he has suffered from the “Truman Show” delusion, a form of psychosis. for the majority of his life. When he is under the command of the Director, Kevin follows directives and has ended up in danger, in jail and committed to the hospital.

Are we romanticizing mental illness? Is it the price one pays to be brilliant? Does our culture have such a twisted relationship with achievement, fame, failure and shame that the sheer force of society’s demands can lead a highly tuned individual to crack under the pressure, just like the hull of an America’s Cup boat. Is mental illness less acceptable for premiere athletes than artists and scientists? Has a culture focused on social media, fifteen minutes of fame, reality tv and escapism fostered the development of such real life delusions?

Mary Pilon, the New York Times bestselling author of the Monopolists, in her new book, “The Kevin Show: An Olympic Athlete’s Battle with Mental Illness” tells the incredible story of Kevin Hall and the psychiatric disorder that leads him to believes he stars in the television show of his life.

http://marypilon.com/

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What If You Felt Like Enough? Apr 12, 2018

What if you didn’t have to prove it? What if you just knew that you were… enough?

We live in a culture where no matter how many achievements you accrue, you never feel you are enough. That goal post just continues to move a little further, and then a little further, yet. And for the women and girls of the post feminism generation the additional pressures are even more extreme. They were told they can do anything and end up feeling they must do everything.. And, they need to do it well, while looking good, being nice, and sending some well timed “thank you” notes would also be appreciated (and maybe even expected.)

Add to these incredible expectations the pressures of social media, goals for effortless perfection and the need to achieve for oneself, your family and the prior generations that gave you these opportunities and something is likely to snap.

Rachel Simmons is the New York Times bestselling author of Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls and The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence. She believed it wasn’t enough for us to open the doors for girls that we also needed to give them the confidence to walk through them. Now she knows we’ve raised a generation of girls who feel no matter how hard they try, they will never be smart enough, successful enough, pretty enough, thin enough, well liked enough, witty enough online or sexy enough. And she’s had enough! Her answer is her latest book, Enough As She Is: How to Help Girls Move Beyond Impossible Standard of Success to Live Healthy, Happy and Fulfilling Lives.

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It’s Not You, It’s Your Schedule Mar 09, 2018

Few of us realize just how much our diurnal patterns affect everything in our lives. But, luckily for us, Dr. Suhas does. Dr. Suhas Kshirsagar, is the author of The Hot Belly Diet, and Change Your Schedule, Change Your Life: How to Harness the Power of Clock Genes to Lose Weight, Optimize Your Workout, and Finally Get a Good Night’s Sleep.

Skipping meals, random workouts, working late and viewing screens into the night, messes with your sleep cycles and every other aspect of your rhythmic functioning down to the genetic level. Our “clock genes” control every aspect of our existence, and the growing body of research on chronobiology reveals just how sensitive we are, including a single cell microbe, to the affects of being out of rhythm.

Dr. Suhas gives us the tools to transform your life for good with three simple steps:

Go to bed by 10:30
Eat your largest meal at noon
Exercise first thing in the morning

http://drsuhas.com/change-your-schedule-change-your-life/

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The Ascent of Angels in America Mar 01, 2018

The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America, an oral history, illuminates and re-qualifies the question, “Who do we want to be as a people?”

Tony Kushner, and all the participants of the many and varied productions of Angels in America, asked the same question 25 year ago. Daringly, asking the question with a strong, effeminate, black, gay man as the protagonist of their Pulitzer Prize, Tony winning play. They made an argument for hope as a political necessity in the worst years of the AIDs crisis. The writers, casts and crews rose up, as did their audiences, to bring the rest of the world along with them. Kushner (like Shakespeare) and his compatriots took on “The painful but joyous work of trying to do better.” Incorporating all the visions of race, class, sex and religion they could muster, they advanced the world through opposition.

Isaac Butler and Dan Kois listened carefully to the play and all of its creators to discover its story and how it wanted to be told. Then they asked a question, “Are we doing what the play and life demand of us, and are things working out?”

We are Living in a new era of the resurgent right, issues and questions remain regarding the human condition. Change is at the center of what it means to be alive, and each of us on this earth is asked what we will do with that required change. When we resist progress, shouting, “Stop!” – People are destroyed inside and out, people are oppressed, and people die unnecessarily, as they did in the AIDs crisis.

Butler and Kois (like Kusher) pose important questions of our models of masculinity and participation – those we are being torn apart by and those we have embraced. Kushner is adamant about the source of toughness; he shows it through the fabulous effeminacy of a hard edged queen. Fabulousness, whatever it may be, was and is the source of strength for the gay community and maybe for us all.

“Change is coming, the question is what are you going to do with it?”

The World is spinning forward…

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-world-only-spins-forward-9781635571769/

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Death and Dying: An Exit Strategy for Managing Death Feb 22, 2018

Dr. Samuel Harrington tells us, “In old age, Comfort Care is more important than prolonging life with excessive technology.” Not because we can’t prolong it, and not because it’s expensive, but because it’s unpleasant for everyone involved.

The goal for the majority of elderly people is to die a peaceful death at home. But because the over medicalization of our healthcare industry is out of control, with the majority of healthcare costs being exacted in the last six months of an individual’s life, that goal is subverted. The focus is set on extending life rather than relieving suffering.

Medicine has changed from a healing art to a commercial enterprise. Dr. Harrington’s personal experience of seeing his parents age, and the challenges and decisions they had to make in the face of the medical juggernaut of technology, motivated him to write a book to guide readers toward maintaining control over their deaths. In his book, At Peace: Choosing a Good Death After a Long Life, Harrington provides strategies for managing our deaths as we have managed our lives, so as not to lose control of our passing.

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Who Wants to Prevent Mass Extinction and Human Suffering? Feb 09, 2018

Scott Freeman is a professor of biology at the University of Washington and the author of Saving Tarboo Creek: One Family’s Quest to Heal the Land. It’s the story of what they did, why they did it and how they saved Tarboo creek. Their work sweat and tears brought a damaged peace of land back to life – a quest to heal more than the land and one Freeman embarked upon with his wife, the book’s illustrator Susan Leopold Freeman

Saving Tarboo Creek is a call to help us find our way. In 2100 the human population will likely pass 11 billion and half the species alive today will be extinct. Or may be, if we don’t act. The challenges of this century are a product of the past century’s successes and it will take another great generation to save the planet.

Let’s start with the steps for restoring a Salmon stream:

Assemble a team
Introduce complexity
Place substantial netting
Divert the Creek

Next, a move to the a natural life. What does that entail? Belonging and being part of a community and participate in it – finding purpose and meaning- all to prevent mass extinction and widespread human suffering… the greatest generation of all has its goal…

The simple list: Limit family size, favor locally grown food, prefer smaller and more efficient homes, transfer the time and money spent on driving to more enjoyable activities, contribute to the preservation of wild places through taxes and private donations, and consider and evaluate your values – do you value materialism over depth of relationship?

https://www.scottfreemanauthor.com/

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Ain’t Nobody Got Time for Superwoman Jan 30, 2018

“Bringing home the bacon, frying it up in a pan and never, never letting him forget he’s a man,” is a drag. Ain’t nobody got time for that! Especially, a truly superb woman – she’s got better, more important things to do. She’s got BEING on her agenda.

Janet Neal’s, part parable, part manifesto, The Superb Woman: It’s All About the Be, leads us from an unsustainable, unfulfilled Superwoman status to a happy and powerful Superb Woman existence. We learn to drop the people pleasing, good girl behaviors to uncover our true, innately powerful, superb self.

Neal tells us, “It’s not always a seamless journey…The realization of who you are and tapping into the innate power, gets you through the difficult times.” We just need to believe that it’s truly better on the other side and be willing to take the leap.

This leap starts with believing you have the right to feel happy, to BE happy, to make choices that may be difficult for others, and learn to stop giving away your power. We’ve got to face our overriding fears of change, the unknown and being held responsible for events gone badly.

When we make the shift to personal power, gratitude, self-forgiveness and a sense of truly deserving, we can retire our often unconscious need to be accepted and liked over being respected and heard – thus making the trade from constriction to expansion.

http://thesuperbwoman.com/

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Why Am I So Depressed? Jan 23, 2018

Asked and answered in Johann Hari’s Lost Connections.

Johann Hari, the New York Times Bestselling author of Chasing The Scream, has a new book out, Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression-And The Unexpected Solutions. And here’s what Brian Eno has to say about it:

“This is one of those extraordinary books that you want all your friends to read immediately- because the shift in worldview is so compelling and dramatic that you wonder how you’ll be able to have conversations with them otherwise. A highly personal book, written with humility, humor, and candor, it nonetheless heralds a crucial new discussion about our mental health – and health of the world we’ve created for ourselves. I haven’t been so gripped for ages…I honestly couldn’t put it down. What a stunning piece of work.” – Brian Eno

“Ditto.” for me. Enough said. Get listening…Get reading!

https://thelostconnections.com/

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Tyranny and the Damage to Truth Jan 15, 2018

What is it like to grow up in a world where truth is the most dangerous enemy? How would you perform in the moments just before your execution? What would you risk for a reminder of love?

Simon Sebag Montefiore is the New York Times bestselling author of The Romanovs and Jerusalem: The Biography. His most recent novel is Red Sky at Noon– the completion of his acclaimed “Moscow Trilogy.” This stunning new novel is set during an epic cavalry ride across the hot Grasslands outside Stalingrad during one of the most merciless battles of WWII.

The scene is 1942 and the forgotten aspects of the war – cavalries, Cossacks, a million horses. Russia during one of the most brutal times in history. A contradictory world where the guilty are promoted and the innocent executed -traitors, defectors, Fascists and Jews. 350,000 Italians sent by Mussolini to fight the Russians. Decimation the unifying factor.

And then there is Stalin -remorseless, merciless, yet often subtle and surprising. Pig headed and delusional, a master of espionage.

Montefiore’s focus in this terrifying, diabolical world is the essential relationships formed –’So much is happening, life is so intense – entire relationships can happen in a day. We can hardly imagine living in a totalitarian state – finding moments of intimacy and ways to feel alive in the midst of this darkness. Only love and human kindness bring redemption in the middle of the horror.’

The key to survival is having no past, having no present.

“For a novelist there are two great subjects to write about, one is war, which is the grit in all of us, where everything is distilled down to its essentials. And the other is love, in all its different faces- family, wife, secret love, passion – all in conflict with each other.” In all its darkness, Montefiore relishes the challenge.

Throughout the trilogy one truth rings clear: “In war and terror, love is redemption, love is freedom, however short and however desperate it is.”

http://www.simonsebagmontefiore.com/

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Would You Like to Understand the Nature of Reality and Never Feel Alone? Jan 09, 2018

“Metaphysics has been screaming at us.” And Dr. Eben Alexander is listening. While teaching at Harvard University, Dr. Alexander was struck with a severe case of bacterial meningitis, lapsing into a week long coma….He woke up with no memory, language or recognition of loved ones, but he remembered experiencing a journey far more real than anything he’d ever experienced in his prior life. This profound and robust conscious experience took place while his neocortex was virtually disabled. And based on all that he knew, that was impossible.

This miracle set him on a search to understand the nature of consciousness. He was forced to question the fundamental assumptions at the basis of science, religion and our shared physical experience. The result of that search is his new book, with Karen Newell, Living in a Mindful Universe: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Heart of Consciousness.

Dr. Eben Alexander, the New York Times best selling author of Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Near Death Experience and Journey, provides evidence that consciousness must be fundamental and the brain is its creator. Thousands of examples of terminal lucidity, acquired savant syndrome – the development of a super human ability in the setting of brain damage – and the placebo effect, prove that our minds influence the personal unfolding of reality and can expand to every aspect of our lives. Expanding our notions of free will and modern quantum physics to develop a richer relationship with the power of the Universe.

We are spiritual beings in a spiritual Universe, and we are never alone. Living in a Mindful Universe shows us the path to greater health, an expanded sense of wholeness, purpose and the great comfort of connectedness.

http://ebenalexander.com/

https://www.sacredacoustics.com/

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How to Meet the Dalai Lama Dec 28, 2017

In conventional terms, Shawn Vij was a huge success. He’d acquired all the sign posts of a wonderful life – higher education, stunning career, beautiful home, family and friends. His moto was solid, “It’s not personal, it’s just business.” But business as usual had not led him where he’d expected to go, happiness was nowhere in sight.

Suffering from ethical fading and psychic numbing, he’d lost touch with his core values and inner voice. The toxic business world had taken him down with its four diseases: Deception, Detraction, Discrimination, Doubt

Then, in a moment of despair, he determined to change his life, meet the Dalai Lama and find his true voice – to lead an authentic life in line with his core values and desires. And he’s done just that. Lucky for us, Shawn Vij describes his journey to find his right path and the steps to success in his new book: Moral Fiber: Awakening Corporate Consciousness.

Nien-he Hsieh, of Harvard business school says “Being true to ourselves can be hard because many of us are afraid to learn what we find when we look deep inside ourselves.”

Vij Learns to be conscious and manage the “poisons” in the business world. He is not advocating against striving for more or giving up nice things. He advocates for awareness and personal responsibility. And he provides us with a five step method to act on our values, so we can do the same.

moralfiber.world

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Prairie Days and the True Pioneer Spirit of Laura Ingalls Wilder Dec 13, 2017

Marta McDowell’s The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Frontier Landscapes that inspired The Little House Books is her latest in a line of work that explores the links between planting and putting pen to paper. She is the author of All the Presidents’ Gardens, Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life and Emily Dickinson’s Garden.

Uncanny as it seems, there are a number of books out this year digging deeper into the history and the legacy of Laura Ingalls Wilder, than ever before. Fact of Fiction, her story has inspired so many and created visions of the time, for better or for worse. In her life, and in regard to the history of the pioneering days, Laura focused on the positive and left out the unpleasant details. She was the Martha Stewart of her day. She reinvented herself again and again. She was bright, optimistic and resilient. She pushed forward and pushed on. She had the dreamer side of Pa and the stoicism of Ma.

The life and times of Laura Ingalls Wilder were more demanding and exciting than even the most ardent fans of the Little House on the Prairie books may have ever imagined. Author Marta McDowell deftly unearths the landscapes and the adventures in a way that is more intimate than a fireside seat in the Little House in the Big Woods. Crossing rivers, farming trees and apples, Homesteading, Indian Territory, blizzards, droughts, pests and laying claims. We may never know the entire truth, but we can certainly appreciate the stories.

http://www.martamcdowell.com/

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Walking with Peety and Running with Jake Nov 17, 2017

Eric O’Grey is the author of Walking with Peety: The Dog Who Saved My Life. After a tough haul, Eric found his much deserved “normal.” And his journey there is a heartwarming and uplifting story of how transformation can come from the most surprising places and lead to unbelievable outcomes.

Eric was 150 pounds overweight. He felt completely alone and empty. He’d been living a life without purpose and meaning and was pretty convinced it wasn’t worth going on. He was suffering from type 2 diabetes and taking so many meds that he had to take meds for the affects of the meds. And then, everything changed. Eric asked God to take his life and God agreed. He took the life that Eric had known for so long and gave him a new one. One that included purpose, love, joy, great food, meaning and a dog named Peety.

Eric shares his and Peety’s epic journey and the path to feeling full and fulfilled. He generously shines a spotlight on his path, so that we may all find ours.

https://ericandpeety.com/

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Am I losing My Mind and Where Can I Find It? Nov 14, 2017

What are the signs that suggest my memory problems are not normal? What’s normal, what’s not and what can we do about it? Over 45 million Americans are now over the age of 65. How much memory loss is to be expected, and what can we do about improving our memory as we age? Andrew E. Budson, MD, and Maureen K. O’Connor, PSYD, answer these questions and more in their new book, Seven Steps to Managing Your Memory: What’s Normal, What’s Not, and What to Do About It.

Our memories were never meant to be perfect. They are actually constructed so we can creatively manage our future. Our memory management system is meant to flexibly manage and imagine future events; it’s the purpose of memory. To imagine a new scenario we need plasticity in the ways we remember, store and retrieve our pasts. You can update memories and when you retrieve the you will be storing them anew.

So, if you are experiencing search and retrieval issues, for example: “What the heck is that guy’s name, who I’ve know for years?” Relax and stop trying to remember their name, think about other things about the person and let you memory do its work unimpeded. Budson and O’Connor set our minds at ease and provide essential information for assessment and treatment when needed. Turns out all these times we find ourselves forgetting may really be an issue of not paying enough attention in the first place.

https://www.andrewbudsonmd.com/

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Is Chicken Making Me Sick? Oct 25, 2017

Maryn McKenna is an award-winning journalist who specializes in public health and food policy. Which turns out to be a heck of a lot sexier than you may have thought- filled with mystery, subterfuge, conflict and intrigue. Her new book, Big Chicken: The Incredible Story of How Antibiotics Created Modern Agriculture and Change the Way the World Eats, tells the incredible story of how so much chicken ended up on our plates, and what it’s doing to our bodies, our food chain and the health of the world.

Big Chicken is aboutunintended consequences and good ideas gone bad. Her research adds another dimension to the old chicken and the egg question, and it’s antibiotics! But not in the traditional sense. She looks at the development of medicine, economics, integrity and honesty all in relation to this magnificent bird. Poultry has gone from an ignored walk on, to the star of the stage. And greed, lack of personal responsibility and putting profits above all else, have all played leading and supporting roles.

http://marynmckenna.com/

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Can We Prevent Mass Violence by Understanding Motive? Oct 19, 2017

Utah Poet Laureate, Paisley Rekdal’s most recent work, The Broken Country: On Trauma, Crime and the Continuing Legacy of Vietnam, is an ethical remembering in the sense of French Philosopher, Paul Ricouer. Rekdal explores the limits of the written word and story, and its power to create and affect the future.

In 2012 a violent incident took place in the Smith’s parking lot in Salt Lake City, just blocks from Rekdal’s home. And she was motivated to explore the longterm cultural and generational effects of the Vietnam War and similar incidences of trauma.

The Las Vegas Mass shooting, the Boston Bombing and violent acts that dramatically impact our communities, motivate us to search for understanding, justification and rational explanations. The randomness of a violent crime leaves us vulnerable and at risk. Motive and reason provide a sense of potential protection; we can categorize, isolate and reason away the event.

Rekdal discovers when we dig a bit deeper to understand, place, identity and those who have become disenfranchised by actions or memories, we can begin to heal the broken individual, community and country. With a focus on catharsis and conclusion through an ordering of memory, we can imagine a final resting place for the trauma and its legacy.

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How to Save Our Planet in Six Acts Oct 09, 2017

When discussing global warming and climate change arguing and trying to convince people of our position rarely if ever works. Our positions often get tangled up with our personal identities. Shared interests and informed decisions go out the window when discourse gets heated. Philip Kitcher attempts to bring constructive conversation back.

Global democracy. Hope. Conversation. In this groundbreaking new work, Philip Kitcher and Evelyn Fox Keller transform the debate surrounding climate change and global warming, clarifying some of the most complex issues facing humanity today. Through understandable, constructive conversation they present the realities of climate change and global warming, giving us pause for thought, action and hope in their book, “The Seasons Alter: How to Save Our Planet in Six Acts.”

Kitcher tells us, “If we’re to have a global alliance. If it’s going to be strong enough to win the war against atmospheric carbon… we need to understand how…despite all kinds of differences… many of us share hopes for the human future.” We share this planet; we need to work out an ethical life together. So, let’s get to work.

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If You Think the Space Time Continuum is Real, Clap Your Hands Sep 25, 2017

If you could travel anywhere in time, would you? Should you? How conditioned are we by the science and words around us? And where does our future lie; in front, behind or all around us? Does free will exist, or are our futures pre-determined? Are we moving toward order or disorder? Is eternity an open or closed system? Is the Universe one big mathematical formula that’s waiting to be figured out? Mr. James Gleick has some answers.

Bestselling author, journalist, and science historian James Gleick, has been called one of the great science writers of all time. His most recent book is Time Travel: A History. And it takes us on a wild ride on the Wayback machine through the history of time travel – a dimension hopping anthology of sorts.

Gleick tells us, “Time travel is a fantasy of the modern era…No one bothered with the future in 1516. It was indistinguishable from the present.” In the twenties the future seemed to be arriving daily. Time travel took shape in the pages of the Pulps. But James Joyce, Virginia wolf and Marcel Proust – were all time traveler writers – thinking about time travel in exciting fluid ways. Fiction writer HG Wells along with world renowned scientists were focused on the fourth dimension. It was born in fantasy and validated by Albert Einstein.

The meaning of time was altered and it conceptually became like a fourth dimension of space – the whole world was learning new things about time because of new technologies – railroads and telegraphs to synchronize clocks across hundreds of miles, geologists looking at billions of years of history and biologists comparing ancient fossils and specie development, literal perspectives were being altered.

So if a hole opens up in the air, would you walk through it, and which way would you turn the dial, forward or back? Meeting yourself as a time traveler could get tricky, and what happens next? It could get messy, problems with free will, continuity of the self and destiny. As Gleick well reminds us, “ A lot of paradoxes in the time travel business…” Ready to go?

https://around.com/

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The Forces of Nature, Fate, Family and the All Powerful Grace of Art Sep 10, 2017

Novelist, Diane B. Saxton was a journalist with Vanity Fair, Holiday Magazine, Huffington Post and Greenwich Review, and covered everything from torture victims to psychics, animal rights activists, exotic travel and Hollywood royalty.

Through Crashing waves, strong winds, Shakespeare and the stormy complications of intimate family relationships, she deftly weaves a tale of mystery, love and loyalty. “She interweaves the lives of three generations of women, one valuable painting, the artist who created it, and those who would do anything to possess it – even kill…During the course of the inquiry and as the summer progresses, the family discovers new facts about their past. They also learn that people are not always who they appear to be – themselves included.”

Saxton explains, “While the tale of PEREGRINE ISLAND is driven by a mystery, the reader finds that his or her satisfaction at the end has been earned, not necessarily by the mystery, but by the novel’s ever-present sense of spiritualism … accentuated by the symbolism of the Sound, the soul of relationships—judge a tree from its fruit, not from the leaves, said Euripedes—plus the message of hope embodied in the wisdom of the very young and the very old.”

http://www.dianebsaxton.com/

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The Hippie Idea from Wavy Gravy to Peter Coyote and the Summer of Love Aug 29, 2017

2017 is the 50 year anniversary of the Summer of Love; or is it? There are a number of misconceptions shrouding the history of the Summer of Love and the Hippie Idea. And acclaimed author Danny Goldberg has set the record straight in his most recent book, In Search of the Lost Chord: 1967 and the Hippie Idea. Goldberg tells us, “There was a time when the word, “hippie” wasn’t a joke, but it didn’t last long.” The word “hippie” may actually have expressed its truest meaning, resonating with what is now the lost chord, in the summer of 1966 – The real Summer of Love

Goldberg takes us along on a historical journey to the places he wasn’t old enough, or cool enough, to be a part of. If he could time travel he’d like to be a lot of places: When Muhammad Ali refused the draft, Dr. King’s stand against the war, the anti-war protest when protesters pretended to elevate the pentagon, when the Beatles made Sargeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band…But there is no place he’d rather have been than the Be In. He talks about what was so threatening to the established order by the counter culture movement. And he conveys what it was that so many “hippies” experienced that has stayed with them their entire lives.

The true Summer of Love existed before there was the barrage of suffocating publicity; it was an innocent time. It is a misconception of the hippie hey day that it was a time of dropping out… The multitude of counter cultures were actually leaning in very deeply.

Peter Coyote famously said,” Acid showed you what was there but didn’t deliver it.. like a helicopter taking you to the top of a mountain and then back without providing a guide to get you back there.” And just maybe that’s what the hippie movement did. Goldberg confirms, “You’ve got to do the spiritual work of a lifetime… A group of us got a glimpse of the way the world can be and something to aspire to, but there’s not that kind of a short cut to utopia.”

By 19967 The coming apart had begun. As soon as Height Ashbury got famous, it was doomed. The media creation of the summer of 1967, brought the summer of dissolution – predators arrived, heroin dealers and the dissemination of the true movement, as the ramifications of over 100,000 people descending upon this small neighborhood set in after the Be In.

By 1968 the balance of forces had grown significantly darker. People today complain about our government and the FBI, but today’s obstruction is nothing like that experienced with J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. The killings of the two greatest leaders who could have bridged the gap between the the functioning society and the ideals of the protest movement, were a tragic end. In October, 1967 a significant ritual was staged.. the Death of Hippie, a coffin was marched through the streets – the external symbols had lost meaning, but the inner values stayed with people and do to this day.

With head, heart and soul, Goldberg leads us through this fantastic journey, shining amidst the peak of hippie idealism and its coming apart to rediscover the incredible lost chord of humanity.

www.amazon.In Search of the Lost Chord

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A Harley, Mid-Life Crises, Oxytocin and the Fonz Jul 26, 2017

Pablo Picasso said, “I am always doing that which I cannot do in order that I may learn how to do it.” And bestselling, author Bernadette Murphy took those words to heart. She learned to give herself the permission to fail, so she could have the courage to start.

Discovering, after 48 years of life, that she loved riding a motorcycle – finding both solitude and a sense of belonging she’d never experienced caused her to question what else didn’t she know about herself. What else might there be out there that could bring such joy? So she began a deep exploration on how risk taking and going out of her comfort zone allowed her to more fully inhabit her authentic self and transform all aspects of life. Success or failure wasn’t the point.

She was literally building skills one freeway exit at a time. Murphy tells us, “We can’t think ourselves into right action, we can only act ourselves into right thinking.” By learning to approach the things that scared her most, she found out it isn’t as bad as she feared and was emboldened. By taking physical risks one learns how to physiologically handle fear in all realms, including psychological and relational. It’s empowering to test ourselves and find out what we are truly capable of and stop selling ourselves short.

On the bike 8 or 9 hours a day with a laser focus, just being present. She felt graceful and powerful at the same time as she rode with others- part of a flock of birds moving in unison. There was something freeing, not trying to prove herself as a badass or sex pot; she was just trying to be another human on the road. And she succeeded!

She learned, “To survive, we have to take the counterintuitive approach. Lean into what scares you with all your might. Throw your body into that turn even when it feels like it will kill you.” The bike took on such huge proportion in her life, she pondered what life would be without it, “Without the bike, I sometimes fear I might cease to exist.”

She tells of the fallacy we’ve all grown up with that the goal is getting the markers of adulthood in place. That once in place, they are supposed to stay there and not be disrupted. That undisturbed, destiny is trapped, as in amber, and now we are supposed to just skate through the rest of life. Yet, reality awakens us. Murphy’s path enlightens ours and she confirms, “All human life has to grow and change or it dies, so we need to learn to challenge ourselves in healthy ways… Is a midlife crisis really a crisis, or is it an awakening? Life is asking us: “Are you ready to shut down and get smaller, or do you still want to grow”

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Dr. Anna Yusim Can Help You Live a Happier, More Meaningful Life Jul 08, 2017

Are we more connected than we think? Do science and spirituality have more in common than we believe? Can we be happier and more fulfilled by connecting with our life purpose and our soul? Yes, yes and yes!

Dr. Anna Yusim, Albert Einstein, and Carl Jung are all in agreement. There is much more going on than meets the eye, and we are literally all in this together.

Dr. Yusim was an extremely successful perfectionist. She’d graduated from Stanford and Yale Universities. She had a thriving psychiatric practice on the Upper East Side of New York, and great friends and family; but something was amiss. She had hit a bump in the road, or what she would later describe as her, “Dark Night of the Soul.” Her life looked perfect from the outside, but inside she felt disconnected and alone. She was having trouble academically for the first time in her life, and the soulmate she’d been searching for hadn’t materialized. So she went looking for answers. She began exploring other cultural traditions of healing. She spent time with shamans in South America, practiced Buddhist meditation in Thailand, and lived in ashrams in India.

She needed to discover the nature of consciousness – how it works, and where it resides. And through her exploration, Dr. Yusim has come to believe that the world works from a very different stand point than she knew. Upon becoming interconnected and aligned with her soul, and understanding the relationship between quantum physics and consciousness, she was able to find herself and fulfillment.

And in her new book, Fulfilled, Dr. Yusim will teach you to conquer that deep inner fatigue from living a life that isn’t authentically your own, and allow you to figure out who you are deep inside, beneath all of the labels and expectations that have been imposed upon yourself. She will open your eyes and open your hearts.

https://www.annayusim.com/

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What We Need to Know About Russian Power Jun 22, 2017

Probably the most important thing to understand about Russia is its end game. Historian and bestselling author, Dr. Simon Sebag Montefiore tells us that Russia’s primary objective is power – with limited focus on ideology, power is the ultimate goal. But with an economy the size of Spain’s, Russia doesn’t have the engine to carry the load of a real super power, so they need to be pragmatic and creative to achieve their lofty aspiration. A top priority is to weaken the West whenever possible and undermine the legitimacy of democracies everywhere. Expansionism may be outdated, but it’s a card Russia can play and no one is more experienced at manipulating the press – theirs and everyone else’s.

Dr. Monetfiore is a descendent of a Jewish titan and magnate who was a well respected friend of Queen Victoria. Early in his career, he was a war correspondence spending time with war lords, and also tried his hand as a banker. He was thrilled and terrified by his adventures in the empire, which included being shot at. He came back to write books on power and how it works. Making history utterly accessible to everyone.

In his most recent, historically accurate, saga filled with murder, debauchery, ambition, empire and sex to rival any episode of The Game of Thrones, he tells us what we need to know about the power structure of Russia. The Romanovs, his full narrative history covering the entire Romanov family dynasty is essential for understanding the current state of international affairs. So timely and relevant today, Montefiore blends the personal and the political into a single narrative, From the excesses and cruelty of Peter the Great to the assassinations of Nicholas and Alexandra.

We discover there is an eery similarity with the way the Russian court worked then and works today. The Economist review says, it is astonishing reading The Romanovs because the inner circle of these tsars was identical and worked identically to “the court” of Vladimir Putin. President Putin admires strength and although he may be improvising, Russia’s influence over the other major powers is at a height greater than even Stalin ever achieved.

And while we are on the topic of Russia, tsars and tsarinas, we may want to mull over President Trump’s fascination with Russia and Putin. The plentitude and the pomp of of this power is alluring. The swaggering gangster like power of the Russian rulers who can act on their own has appeal. Will Trump strive to become the tsar of America, ruling without checks and balances? It’s a risky proposition because history shows us supreme power works both ways. Putin and Trump may suffer the same fate as Emperor Paul in 1801, ultimately being brought down by their own courtiers. Only time will tell and Dr. Montefiore may have another saga to publish.

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Can America Find Its Way Back to a Place of Integrity? Jun 08, 2017

Thomas Jefferson writes in the Declaration of Independence, “We let facts speak to a candid world.” But what happens when the world is no longer candid? Is there a contingency plan?

Today, there is an unprecedented assault on the truth coming from all directions. We have lost the ability to reason together. Reason and constructive discourse have been replaced with hyperbole, hypocrisy and dehumanization. Paranoia and conspiracy mongering have taken center stage in the news and throughout the political arena. Tolerance of every kind is at an all time low. The night before Greg Gianforte won a seat in the House of Representatives, he body slammed a reporter, merely for asking a question, and then justified it by falsely asserting that it was called for because the reporter was a liberal, and a whiny millennial to boot.

In The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton queried whether people are capable of writing a constitution in which they can live justly and fairly reason, or whether we all are fated inevitably to be ruled by force and accident? Peter Wehner believes it’s possible, but we may have momentarily lost our way. Wehner is a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He served three GOP administrations and writes and speaks about the moral fracturing and confusion within our current society and politics. He believes our political culture is sick and the assault on truth has reached unprecedented and dangerous proportions. Here he discusses what led to our current state and how we can rise together out of it and find our way back to constructive discourse and a healthy respect for the opposition.

Wehner tells us,“Politics has always been a contentious business and if you look back through American history there have been some deeply divided times.” But it is alarmingly different today. We are creating our own narratives and just deny the facts we don’t like. We’ve always looked for data to support preexisting views, but advances in technology and social media progress enforce these previous tendencies and raise them to an alarming degree.

“The Country itself in is a kind of distemper, in a bad mood, a foul mood and that’s manifested itself in politics.” Both parties have become more ideological with less common ground – so the other team must be defeated at all costs. The Country is out of sorts, economically vulnerable, so ugly populism rises up; we begin to look within and look for enemies to blame and classify as others.

The American ideal and credo, E pluribus unum (Out of many One) is suffering, there is a coming apart and the path to piece it together again requires a shift back to integrity, both moral and intellectual.

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Let’s Draw a Picture of Prescription Drug Use in America Today Jun 02, 2017

Let’s start with the landscape…

50% of Americans are taking some kind of medication. Hundreds of thousands of deaths each year occur from adverse drug reactions. Close to $300 billion is spent a year on prescriptive drugs –in 2009 almost $11 billion was spent on antibiotic therapy alone. And resistant infections now account for $20 billion in annual health care costs. Livestock consume 32 million pounds of antibiotics in 2012. 26% of adults in the United States are now taking a statin – costing the healthcare system $20 billion annually. 40 million Americans have a chronic sleep disorder and 62% of adults experience a sleep problem a few nights per week. Adverse reactions to drugs are the fourth leading cause of death in the United States and in 2010 antidepressants were the second most commonly prescribed medication. We’ve got our background.

Now let’s focus in on our subjects…Antibiotics, Statins for high cholesterol, GERD, Antihistamines, Medications for the common cold and flu, Sleep Aids, Steroids, NSAIDs, Psychiatric Medications for adults, children, and adolescents, ADHD medications, Opioids for chronic pain, Antihypertensive drugs, Diabetes, Osteopenia and other preconditions. It’s a crowded landscape!

And now for the master critique. We are over medicated and under informed. Dr. Andrew Weil tells us, “We have a problem. More people are taking more medications than ever before, and that is cause for concern…No responsible physician today would reject medications as a method of treating disease and maintaining health. But it is one method only.”

His new book, Mind Over Meds: Know When Drugs are Necessary, When Alternatives Are Better – and When to Let Your Body Heal on Its Own, is said to be the go to resource for anyone who is sick and tired of being sick and tired. (And as our landscape demonstrates that is a much bigger audience than we’d like.) Weil’s solution is simple, educate. “My reason for writing this book is simple. I believe that few people on popular medications understand how they work, whether they work well enough to justify the risks of using them, and what other effective methods of treatment are available to use along with them or in place of them.”

https://www.drweil.com/

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Ari Meisel is Changing Your World May 20, 2017

The one question typically on entrepreneur Ari’s Meisel’s mind is: How to be more efficient and effective? He is constantly looking at how he is doing what he’s doing and then figuring out how he can do it better. It is this conscious and inquisitive mindset that served him so well as he beat Crohn’s disease – an “incurable” disease -and when he gut renovated a 2000 foot, New York loft in 21 days, just prior to his wedding. It is this same mindset of awareness and optimization that led to imagining and establishing Leverage.

Leverage, where no task is too big or too small (as long as it’s legal) for this boutique of virtual assistants. Leverage is powering the future of work, allowing people to work when they want, where they want and, most importantly, on what they want. Allowing people to work on what they are best at, Leverage frees up your valuable time so it can be used in the most productive manner possible.

Number four on the Forbes 10 Best Books for Entrepreneurs in 2017 list, comfortably nestled between Tim Ferriss and Tony Robbins, Ari’s most recent book, Idea to Execution: How to Optimize, Automate, and Outsource Everything in Your Business, written with business partner, Nick Sonnenberg documents their own experience creating a successful company from an impromptu, dinner conversation idea to a successful startup in a few short months. They developed and executed their superior approach to Optimization, Automation, and Outsourcing to create a profitable Virtual Assistant company – Leverage

Ari’s number one tip for personal and professional success? Place artificial constraints on your time, money and space to force your brain to ideate and become more innovative, then use an external brain to capture your genius.

Ari believes everybody has some sort of genius in them, and most of the time it’s being obfuscated by something in their lives that’s preventing them from realizing it. He tells us, “Just giving yourself the space to use it the way that you want, great things will happen for you, your life, your family and the entire world.” Ari doesn’t believe in a work life balance, he believes in a work life integration. He wants to improve in every way, every day, whether as a father, friend, husband or business person. And he wants you to join him – with Leverage he’s providing you the platform to do so.

“We want people doing as much as they are humanly cable of, enjoying it, loving it and doing their best and highest work.” His mission is to empower the future of work because there is nothing more important, no greater success, than people feeling they are having an impact and doing something meaningful.

https://getleverage.com/

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Does Morality Have a True North? May 12, 2017

If there was a morality pill would you take it? Would it be moral to insist it be forced upon others? Are we born moral creatures, or is morality learned? Is morality situational, relative or absolute? Does it change when our basic survival is threatened? Can our views of morality change in retrospect? Has technology caught up with, or even surpassed, our moral maturity?

Acclaimed author Eden Collinsworth, in her latest book, Behaving Badly: The New Morality in Politics, Sex and Business, explores the state of morality in these unsettled times. Through conversation with the powerful, famous, and obscure, she discovers how we navigate complex moral situations in an increasingly challenging, and ethically flexible, time in history.

Exploring the correlation between character and morality through surprising, remarkable individual stories, Collinsworth adopts a systematic approach, with discussions and interviews with people one wouldn’t expect to speak on these topics ranging from drone strikes to sexuality and fidelity.

After her year of living morality, Collinsworth determines today’s morality is ultimately a personal choice differing on the individual and circumstances. She tells us, “One relies on one’s own moral compass to determine what is right… we will have to hold each other to account… the demographics of the world has changed profoundly… more and more we will walk with those who don’t share our values..” So, we must be prepared.

http://www.edencollinsworth.com/behaving-badly/

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The Force or the Dark Side, What’s the True Power of Turning a Phrase? May 06, 2017

Everyone would agree, it’s going to be a heck of a lot easier to repeal Obamacare than it would be to repeal The Affordable Care Act. Who would want to repeal that? But wait, aren’t they the same thing? Has wordsmithing taken on a new relevance in today’s society? Well, Henry Beard, cofounder of the National Lampoon and author of numerous best selling (and semi best selling) books, thinks so. And this Harvard Guy has quite a bit to say about it. “Clearly we are entering in a time where spin has really gone off the map!”

Beard is the co-author of Spinglish: How to Succeed in Business and Politics and Everything Else Without Really Lying. The Definitive Dictionary of Deliberately Deceptive Language. He eloquently tells us, that in this new world of intensified polarity, the ability to use particular phrases or turn a term has an intensified significant impact. Words are what won and lost our last presidential election.

The days of Walter Cronkite are long gone, “The news should be reported as it comes along and you don’t fiddle with it and you try to put it out as neutrally as possible. Nobody’s perfect but the general motivation was, I’m a news person. You were not a spokesperson for a particular point of view.” Traditional media still exists, but so much of it has become politically directed. News and information is no longer a clean report, it’s got a bias or is spun as having a bias. News is now given with an intent of purpose of affect and there are so many news sources to choose from with particular slants that we choose what we feel most comfortable with. We shop our news!

Spin is a deception to trigger a response either with bait and switch, mild mannered phrases or plain old vulgar rudeness. We use unnecessarily strong words to make things sound worse or overly gentle phrases in a confusing string to assuage and distract the listener. So where are the boundaries? When is it spin and when is it simply a bold face lie? What might have been deemed a lie, yesterday, has become an inoperative statement, today, and we hear those all the time.

Heck, we just want to put things in the best possible light and hide our deficiencies, and a good use of language is a very effective way to do it. With a flick of the tongue, we can assign or skirt responsibility and mistreatment. So we call water located inside a well contaminated with trichloroethylene chemical solvents stuck in a warehouse next to a designated industrial site, Spring Water; and suicide becomes a Self Injurious Behavior Incidence at Gitmo.

If we take a change in mores and add in a good strong growth of social media, we’ve got a whole new source of mis-information and dis-information being spread at a rapid pace and continual rate. It gets repeated all the time and all we’ve got to do is learn how to recognize it and decipher the codes.

http://spin-glish.com/

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Confronting the Walls Beyond Prison Apr 26, 2017

Evidence shows that the likelihood of relapse or recidivism is directly linked to the level of ongoing support a person receives upon being released back to the community after incarceration. And Beyond the Wall, an audience favorite at the 2017 Sun Valley Film Festival, deftly tackles the complicated issues of incarceration, recidivism, and reform. It does so with an optimistic message, providing real hope and guidance for the future.

This illuminating, social impact film, vividly depicts the often insurmountable struggle to re-establish oneself in the community, family unit and workforce while navigating daunting internal and external barriers.

Gifted Filmmaker Jenny Phillips, a cultural anthropologist and writer, has a psychotherapy practice specializing in crisis intervention, family and marriage therapy, behavioral medicine and mindfulness training. Following on the heels of her successful 2007 documentary, Dhamma Brothers, a tribute to her revolutionary program to bring Mindfulness Training into a Maximum Security Prison, Phillips ventures to address another troubling aspect of our ailing criminal justice system.

She says, “The film ends up having very human stories (rising from) the statistics of recidivism and being plagued by issues of addiction, poverty, lack of education and jobs.” Phillips’ foremost goal for the film is the humanization of a system that has become dehumanized. Judges, attorneys, police chiefs, populations inside institutions, public defenders prosecutors and wardens are seeing this film, and the reception is incredible. “I see them now as people.” remarked a judge after seeing the film.

America has unintentionally created an institution of incarceration. Breaking the cycle of repetitive incarceration is tough on many levels; but there is hope: community alternatives to incarceration, tailored re-entry programs, a focus on justice reinvestment over incarceration and treatment programs behind the walls, so our communities can move beyond them.

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Can a Capitalist Socialist’s Time Management Skills Save the World? Apr 20, 2017

Technology Entrepreneur, Jim Estill is the author of two books, Time Leadership: Lessons from a CEO and Zero to $2Billion: The Marketing and Branding Story Behind the Growth. He is also a successful investor, executive and philanthropist. He will be receiving the Order of Ontario, later this year, for his inspiring humanitarian efforts in the resettlement of 58 Syrian Refugee families to his hometown of Guelph, Ontario. Jim will tell you that he is a distribution guy, and that what he’s done isn’t much, just some systems analysis, plan development, process creation and a little time management application. The over 200 people whose lives Jim’s generosity and bravery have saved will tell you different.

Why do some people step up to act while others stand on the sidelines, and what can we do to hedge our bets for success? We can take a lesson from Jim Estill.

Jim had a vision and he had a clear definition of success: 58 families resettled, working, contributing, paying taxes, rent, speaking English, experiencing some degree of integration, buying groceries where we by groceries, not on welfare, empowered and optimistic. And Jim had studied and had a plan. Like the conductor of a fine tuned orchestra, he smoothly orchestrated the resettlement of 250 displaced people; with the hard won lessons of process, hard work, commitment and efficiency to guide him.

Jim will tell you, “Do the right thing. The more you know yourself, the more your competitive advantage. Work is good. Work hard and make sure what you do scales. Focus on implementation. Start one success habit a day. And pick the right sized opportunity for yourself that elevates your chances for success and the scale you enjoy.”

He will also tell you that not making a decision is making a decision to do nothing. And he didn’t want to be one of those people who did nothing. So, he built a complete program to get these refugee families Canadian job ready and set up to successfully integrate into the community. Set up like a business and run like a business, but with 800 registered volunteers – “friends” to help with ESL, tea circles, walk and talks. Arabic and English speaking Mentor families and providers to assist with trips to the library, transportation, bus rides, bank errands, shopping and health appointments.

He created a jobs program in his own factory. He tapped individuals, businesses, churches, and charitable organizations to get what the program needed. From new socks and underwear to storage space. Assigning five volunteer families to each refugee family for support, basic logistics, adaptation and working through the guilt and depression of having left their own families, work and homes behind.

www.danby.com

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Why We Keep the Crazy People in the Shadows Apr 14, 2017

“Psychotic people have souls. They have identities. They have hope. They have dreams. They are not to be shunted away, as they were 7 centuries ago in Bedlum Asylum, beaten…” Ron Powers

New York Times bestselling author, Ron Powers, is a Pulitzer Prize winning critic and Emmy award winning television commentator. He has written numerous books, the most recent entitled: “No One Cares About Crazy People: the chaos and heartbreak of mental health in America.” He is a caring human, the husband of Honoree Fleming and father of two magnificent sons, Kevin and Dean. Both of whom were afflicted with schizophrenia. Ron lost his son Kevin to suicide one week prior to Kevin’s 21^st birthday.

It would take Ron 10 years to settle in on writing this book, the book he promised himself and his family he would never write.

Ron was determined to shine a bright light into the shadows and welcome those who had lived within them for far too long, back into the light. He tells us, although no cures for mental illness exist, the quicker and more accurately the early symptoms are noticed and treated the better prospects for minimizing the effects. “The larger point in writing this then is to arm other families with a sense of urgency that perhaps came to us too late…Act quickly and keep acting.”

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What Can One Soul Do to Change American Politics for the Better? Apr 07, 2017

Charley Hardy, a former Catholic priest and prior candidate for the U.S. Senate in Wyoming will tell you a single soul can do quite a lot to change the status quo. You just need a little daring, blind faith, hard work, a big bus and the semblance of a plan.

Charlie, with an accumulation of 75 years of youth, had spent nearly a decade serving the poor while living in a cardboard shack in a Venezuelan slum. Upon his 2011 return to his hometown of Cheyenne, Wyoming, he was shocked to see similar poverty, hunger, despair and homelessness. So he inspired a ragtag band of idealistic volunteers to help him shake up the political establishment.

And award winning, documentary film maker, Reed Lindsay beautifully captured this illuminating adventure on film. Charlie vs Goliath is a charming, enlightened and inspiring feature-length documentary about an ordinary man’s extraordinary struggle to right the playing field and bring integrity back to the office and the race.

Charlie had high expectations of his right (and opportunity) to participate in government, and with good reason. In the good ol’ days, he could walk right in to, then Wyoming representative, Dick Cheney’s office for a heart to heart chat. But times had changed, upon being snubbed by his congressional representatives, Charlie decided he must take action and determined to run for office himself in 2014 against the incumbent Republican opponent, who was armed with a $3 million war chest. Not great odds, but Charlie, this 21st century Don Quixote, was undeterred.

Arguably, It would be hard to find a more unlikely candidate, but Charlie’s decision to run for office was based on a deep rooted concern regarding our Nation’s history of social policy. All it took was intention, determination and two hundred dollars paid to the secretary of state to declare his candidacy, and he was off and running, literally.

On the surface this film is about getting money out of politics and the story of the forgotten majority of middle America that swayed our most recent Presidential election. At its core, this film is about the power of persistence and hope. Charlie had said, “Someone has got to start shouting about this!” when he saw the state of the average person in his own town. And luckily for us, he did. I suggest we listen.

http://www.charlievsgoliath.com/

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Who Will Strike It Rich In Cannabis Country? Mar 31, 2017

Federal government raids, outlaws and renegades, entrepreneurs and established big business, mom and pop markets, loyalty to community -The contemporary Wild West Gold Rush is green. Kathleen Tracy tells us, “There is no proof anywhere that cannabis is more problematic than alcohol and it’s probably less and yet it remains up there with heroin and other controlled substances and no one can give a good reason why.” However, alcohol is an established acceptable commodity and cannabis is illegal. Prohibition didn’t keep people from drinking alcohol and the war on drugs hasn’t diminished drug use.

Misinformation and misunderstandings regarding the values and benefits of cannabis and hemp abound. The plant’s abundant utilities go unsung as: an alternative biofuel; cheap, biodegradable plastic; stimulator of manufacturing and agricultural jobs; quality of life enhancer, including effective pain management, sleep inducer, eating motivator, to improve functioning for those suffering with disease, injury and chronic anxiety.

Is it a gateway drug? If you smoke it will you end up on skid row with a needle hanging out of your arm? And is hemp a gateway crop? Is it really a slippery slope or are there market interests other than public health at play to keep the crop at bay? Do the current industrialists want to keep control of their markets regardless of the potential benefits to society?

Kathleen Tracy and Michael Caldwell are the authors of the enlightening and thought provoking new book, “The Great Green Gold Rush.” Here, Ms. Tracy discusses the players, the industries, entrepreneurs and the rapidly changing game of legalizing marijuana, and societal acceptance of cannabis in all of its glory. How close are we to the tipping point of normalizing this economically and environmentally valuable crop? And what will be the affects upon cottage industries, big pharma and the housing and agricultural markets of those regions who choose to fully embrace the crop’s potential?

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Who’s Afraid of President Trump? Mar 16, 2017

What are the limits of Presidential power and authority? Could an imbalance in the governmental power structure make our Democracy vulnerable and put it at risk of falling apart? What is the President authorized to do; where does that authorization come from and what are the constraints on that power?

There has been a vast expansion of Presidential power over the last 200 years, including decisions to use force. The Executive branch has gained powers the Founding Fathers never would have imagined. At the same time, Congressional power has weakened. The Famers didn’t predict the party system and George Washington warned of the dangers of established factions, in his Farewell address. Partisanship has been sharply on the rise for the last 20 years with unprecedented allegiance to a party and regional block. Is the President over reaching? Has Congress lost its mojo and will the courts come to the rescue to save the day and our democracy?

University of Pennsylvania Law School Assistant Professor Jean Galbraith discusses the Framers’ vision, the state of the Nation and the dangers of Presidential over reaching. She tells us, “Our system of government is not only held up by hard laws, but it’s held up by soft norms.. not formally legally binding ones, but they are important to making a government function and function well…Eroding civility will be deeply damaging to our government going forward.”

Galibraith is a scholar of U.S. Foreign Relations law and Public International law. Her work focuses on the allocation of legal authority among U.S. governmental actors. She is an International and Constitutional law expert. We examine the breakdown of the Founders’ framework regarding the Checks and Balance system and the Separation of Powers.

https://www.law.upenn.edu/cf/faculty/jgalbrai/

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Edward Sorel, Religion, Sex and Scandal Mar 10, 2017

Mary Astor’s Purple Diary is a story of Hollywood, New York, love affairs, divorce, custody battles, organized religion, fake news, politics, sex and scandals.

Writer and illustrator, Edward Sorel, grew up in the Depression in a family of vocal Communists and Stalinites. He found solace in his frequent escapes to his other “family” in the magical world of films. Tucked away in the fantastical movie palaces of the day, like the Lowes Paradise in the Bronx – birds flying, clouds moving, stars sparkling – life had possibilities.

Sorel emerged from a terrible relationship with his father, understanding the power of reinvention, the need for taking personal responsibility and the necessity to make the tough choice to break unhealthy family ties. He was lucky, he had one good parent. “All you need is one good parent.” Sorel had a loving, encouraging mother. The famed Mary Astor had none. The consequences of domineering, demanding, and abusive parents turned out to drive Miss Astor’s choices for a lifetime.

Sorel, broke and on the verge of a nervous breakdown after leaving his first wife, follows his disillusioned, Communist Party therapist to a Quaker meeting. Although a staunch non-believer, Sorel was incredibly moved by the silence. He’d found another safe harbor, a place to spend quality time with his children. And it would lead him to the loves of his life, the best hot chocolate in the world and a marriage proposal.

“Cursed with the world’s foremost fixation” after finding newspaper clippings of Mary Astor’s story, he would become the keeper of Mary Astor’s flame. Fifty years later, he offers a satiric slant to an accomplished, public and tragic life whose story shines a light on his own profound and amusing tale.

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Is Qi, Vital Life Energy, the Key to Health and Longevity? Mar 02, 2017

Chinese Martial Arts Master, Dr. Shin Lin was a contemporary of Bruce Lee, training under the same martial arts master for physical training, enhancing health, fighting and self defense. Dr. Lin is the past Chairman of Biophysics at Johns Hopkins, trained in many forms of Chinese medicine, including acupuncture. He had a question, he wondered how electrical energy can affect cellular movement and what is the role of Qi?

After being recruited to the role of Dean of the School of Biological Sciences at UC Irvine, he set out to find the answer. He and the members of his laboratory designed experiments to scientifically measure what specific movements benefit the mind and body the most. They successfully explored the question of what Qi, the ancient concept of vital life energy, is and how it is enhanced through Tai Chi, Qi Gong and Chinese medicine. Their findings are remarkable!

Dr. Lin says, “From the yin comes the yang, from the yang comes the yin.” The concept of Prana or Ki as it is known in other cultures has existed for thousands of years. And now, through the work of Dr. Lin and his team, we have a much greater understanding of its complicated and sophisticated operation in the physical body.

Science has proven that physical exercise increases the number of cells in the hippocampus and can inhibit the stress response. Moving meditation helps not only the psychological side but enhances cell production.

With the biomedical devices created and utilized by his team, Dr. Lin was able to go about measuring the release of heat and biophotons – a bluish green light, emitted by the body at a rate of less than ten photons per second (a million a second put out by a light bulb.) They built a single photon counting system and built devices to measure electrical output. And are now able to prescribe meditative movements to match specific ailments.

So if you need to rejuvenate your system, a few minutes of focused repetitive movements may be just what you need to boost your energy both physical and vital, increase seratonin, mental acuity and focus, to reduce pain or inflammation. Health enhancement and general maintenance benefits such as better sleep better and stronger muscles and bones are a committed Tai Chi practice away.

http://mindbodylab.bio.uci.edu/

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What Would Buddha Say About Our Free Market Economy? Feb 24, 2017

Economist Clair Brown, Ph.D., thinks the answer is plenty. In her new book, Buddhist Economics: An Enlightened Approach to the Dismal Science, Professor Brown discusses her holistic approach to organizing the economy and accurately measuring its success. She embraces and solves for questions of values, sustainability and equity while advocating the replacement of pure materialism with more positive collective aspirations.

The free market system is well established, it’s efficient and it’s simple to learn. But there are terminal problems with it as a system and as an accurate indicator of the health of the nation. Not only are the required elements rarely in play but it ignores global environmental consequences and economic inequalities.

The markets alone can’t regulate the amount of pollution, poor agricultural processes, and water waste and damage. We need governmental regulations. People are interdependent globally and with nature. Yet our current economic system doesn’t take that into account. What we truly care about is how people are doing, not primarily their income, yet that’s not what’s currently measured. We’ve got the wrong measuring stick.

What we choose to assign value to makes a difference as to whether it’s “valuable” to our GDP and how our country is doing. Current GDP has no environmental degradation included and no consideration of the distribution of income – disparities are not illustrated. The current pie only represents what we buy, so more dollars spent equals more value, not happiness, not sustainability and not free time or enjoyment.

We’ve already got the answers. Carbon taxes diminish pollution and progressive taxation has been proven to be effective and not to diminish performance – it only affects the distribution of the pie, not how big it is. Yet we persist in ignoring the facts. In 2014, forty countries paid out a total of 160 billion dollars in fossil fuel subsidies, motivating companies to get as much fossil fuel out of the ground as possible. We are inadvertently our own worst enemy.

Other countries are doing better. It’s possible. With intention, focus and our eyes wide open, we can establish government policies that reflect interdependent values between one another and nature. We can foster a sustainable biosphere and equality. We can support developing countries to leapfrog to clean technology. We can create social norms that get people to live differently by changing what we value and what we measure. Because what we measure is how we determine our focus.

We must choose how much pollution and inequality we are willing to accept. Governments can structure markets to get basics for everyone and take care of the environment. The technology exists, we only need to commit.

buddhisteconomics.net

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A Little Light Hearted Happy Ever After Romance for Spring Feb 17, 2017

Acclaimed author, Candis Terry gives us a glimpse into the world of the Romance Novel. What it’s like to write one and what it means to live in one. Terry is the author of sassy contemporary romances. She is passionate about writing and writing about relationships. She’s most intrigued by the push and pull of the search for love, the impassioned desire for happily ever after and she’s delighted by the security one finds in discovering their own happily ever after.

Born in Southern California, growing up cruising the busy boulevards, Terry now finds herself cruising the fields of her farm, but says the livestock don’t much care. Farm life was an unexpected move she made to give her daughter a broader perspective – an obviously successful move, as her daughter is now a 3 time rodeo queen – So check that off the bucket list.

Terry’s own childhood was challenging; learning to manage a difficult family life wasn’t easy and books became her escape. In adolescence, writing became her refuge and support. Later, as a new mother facing an endless stream of sleepless nights, on a suggestion from a friend, she dove into a stack of romance novels. And she was hooked. One fateful night while rocking her sleepless daughter as dawn was quick approaching, she decided to write one of her own.

With unbelievable determination, Terry persisted for 22 years to reach her goal to become a published author – to get that phone call that said, “I want to buy your book.” On the verge of giving up, she had decided to give it one last try, she’d write one more book, the book she’d always wanted to write, the one for her. She let go and let her characters take over, even sometimes literally surprising her by the turns they took. And lo and behold she wrote and sold the book of her heart…And now her books are in ours.

www.candisterry.com

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“Be Afraid. Be Very, Very, Afraid.” Or Not: The Futility of Unfounded Fears Feb 06, 2017

Barry Glassner, author of The Culture of Fear, Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things: Crime, Drugs, Minorities, Teen Moms, Killer Kids, Mutant Microbes, Plane Crashes, Road Rage, and So Much More, tells us that three out of four Americans report feeling more afraid than they did two decades ago.

Glassner answers the question: Are we being attacked, and by whom? Fear is useful when it is based on something rational and motivates an appropriate reaction. “Fear is valuable when you are actually in danger and you need to respond quickly.” But how is it that there are so many fears, and that so many of them are unfounded, creating panic and irrational reactions? These false fears put us in a constant state of anxiety and actually more danger.

Where is this fear mongering coming from and who benefits? What power and money is gained from tapping into Americans’ fears? Fear mongering by politicians, news outlets, corporations and advocacy groups for every kind of issue – raising money and selling memberships – benefit the organizations promoting these fears and scares.

Are we being attacked and by whom? Misinformation, intentional and accidental, without corrections of errors of reporting. Casting isolated incidents as trends and manipulating statistics, we lose all sense of proportion. Glassner explores the proliferation of these false fears – Who benefits, Who loses? Who are the villains, the heroes and who are the victims? What are the causes and how can we respond?

Americans are afraid of the wrong things and that has big and far reaching consequences. Glassner explains what they are and why it matters so very much – emotionally, economically and in regard to equality and justice. The consequences to society of these false fears are real. Just ask yourself why so many of today’s schools look and feel like high security prisons. The real issues are complicated, messy and much harder to sell to the public; but to make a difference, that’s just where we need to focus.

http://barryglassner.com/the_culture_of_fear.html

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How Does Stress Affect the Brain? Jan 25, 2017

How do you remember where you parked your car and will your brain shrink if you can’t remember?

Neuroscientist Elizabeth Kirby heads the Kirby Lab at the Ohio State University – Department of Psychology. Drawn by the power of science to discover the truths of the world through experimentation and replication. Kirby has set her sights on the workings of the Hippocampus. Studying its cells, circuitry and relatively new found power of neurogenesis. Research has shown that too much of the wrong kind of stress can cause the branching in the amygdala to grow and the hippocampus to actually shrink.

Researching the power of stress and its affects on the cell and the entire brain, from cell division to neuron development and the life of those neurons, Kirby has demonstrated the effects of stressors – brief or constant – positive or negative – affect cell functioning at every stage. Relative stressors can make functioning a little better or cause the cells to literally die off. Kirby has found that certain types and amounts of stress can be a good thing. However, chronic stress and depression have a detrimental influence, impacting our overall health, emotions and brain in a negative manner.

Memory is also impacted. Memories are dependent on the hippocampus for establishing the workings of place, procedural and autobiographical narratives through relative created circuitry. Retrievable memories ensure our growth and survival. We need to remember a dangerous intersection we pass each day, but maybe not so much what we had for breakfast yesterday. The cells and neurons in our brain are responsible for how we remember where we parked our car and our personal history and narrative.

With its potential for neuron growth, and responsibility for critically functioning memory (my new favorite part of the brain) the hippocampus is a likely candidate to study to unveil the mysteries of unraveling the potential for healing and regeneration of the brain.

http://faculty.psy.ohio-state.edu/kirby/lab/

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How to Make the World a Better Place Jan 12, 2017

Yale researcher Paul Bloom, author of How Pleasure Works and Just Babies, disagrees with policy makers, activists, scientists and philosophers who think the only problem with empathy is that we need more of it. Bloom convincingly argues that the natural impulse to share the feelings of others can do more harm than good, leading to inequality and immorality. In his most recent book, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, Bloom exposes and explores the biases of empathy. He questions the assumed positive relationship between empathy and morality, and demonstrates the two often point in different directions.

When deliberating over decisions, it’s actually preferable to examine our gut feelings critically before we act. How we feel about something may lead to a very different conclusion than the intellectual, rational analysis of factual data.

Bloom believes the world is getting better, it just may not be emotional empathy that is getting us there. He says, “We are becoming smarter when it comes to morality.” He thinks, we aren’t angels, we aren’t perfect, but typically we are good at using our minds at decision making, caring about the facts and consequences and the best way to achieve certain goals.

Bloom asks, “What is the best approach to help people and alleviate suffering?” And then with rational thinking as his guide, he goes about finding the answer. It turns out, indulging one’s empathy might give one a great deal of personal satisfaction, but empathy alone often leads us astray. However, a union of a burst of empathetic compassion to motivate us, giving way to the rigor of the rational mind, leads us to the most successful and moral decisions possible.

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Getting the Life You Picture Jan 03, 2017

Change Agent, Patti Dobrowolski, teaches us how to create and work the “Snap Shot of the Big Picture” utilizing the brain to get what we want by learning how to draw and visualize our way to our desired future. Figure out what works and what doesn’t and create the life you want to live. Hacking ourselves to clear away the roadblocks, test new paths and steer ourselves to what works, making us be better performers in the world to be able to be our best at all times.

Learn to conquer your fear and the lack of self confidence that stands in your way of getting what you want. Learn to take bold steps, align how you feel with your vision of the future, achieving desired outcomes.

The brain learns from reflecting on experience. Consciousness is the expansion of self. Success depends on our ability to frame history and head towards the future. Wake up and pay attention to your life, reflect. Become self aware of what you are experiencing and the impact it has. Utilize your imagination, your intuition and train your brain to create the success you desire. And most of all, have some fun!

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Racism, Blackness and Being Orphaned in a Silent Cosmos Dec 14, 2016

Growing up in the orphaned space of the Philadelphia Projects, author and Philosophy Professor, George Yancy, embarked on an unlikely trajectory. From an early age, he had begun asking some very big questions: questioning the cosmic unfairness of death, the meaning of life and the possibility of being damned for eternity. While reading the “P” section of the encyclopedia, he serendipitously stumbled upon the term philosopher, and a career in philosophy was born.

Courageously, Yancy ventured to publicly address racism in America with his open letter in the New York Times, “Dear White America.” The response was overwhelming. He says, “The alarming reality is that the response to “Dear White America” revealed just how much racism continues to exist in our so-called post-racial America.”

In a society that hides beneath the seductions of normalization, critique is undesirable and deemed dangerous.

Here, Professor Yancy discusses his quest to discover the meaning of life and death, proof of God’s existence, the truths of religion and removing the masks of prejudice. He dives deep into the darkness of the soul and invites the rest of us to aspire to be better human beings. He looks piercingly into the abyss of human suffering with stamina and vulnerability to create a more beloved community, free of racism.

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Can Black Soldier Flies Save Our Oceans? Nov 29, 2016

Scientist, Philip Taylor believes the Black Soldier Fly may be the answer to the missing link in the food chain that is currently destroying the world’s oceans. Taylor tells us, “Every pound of farmed fish we eat requires five to 10 pounds on average of small, wild fish—such as herring, anchovies, and sardines—to raise it” It’s natural for animal feed to include insects, but as a result of an old canning law, it’s been disallowed.

With inventor, environmentalist and part crusader, PhilipTaylor, a postdoctoral fellow at Duke University, and a research associate in rainforest ecology at the University of Colorado Boulder, we discuss sustainability, ethics, boundaries, and the potential, unintended consequences of scientific advances. We explore the dangers of doing something primarily because science can, rather than responsibly researching whether it’s truly a good idea.

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Sometimes Brilliant, Always Illuminating Nov 18, 2016

Larry Brilliant, M.D., M.P.H., a pioneering physician, hippie, tech innovator, philanthropist and key player in the eradication of one of the worst pandemics in human history, talks about “Bending the arc of history toward justice.” He believes there is a chance for all of us to get involved, a place for everyone and something each of us can do to make the world a better place. He is convinced the world isn’t a terrible place. Not only is there the potential for it to be a utopia, there is a possible role for each and every one of us to play in making it so.

If you have ever pondered life’s biggest questions: What is the greatest good you can do with your life? Why are we here? What is our life for? How can we do any good? Dr. Larry Brilliant has some optimistic answers. He has seen first hand what people can accomplish when they come together (even in the midst of a cold war.) By finding the people who inspire us, gathering around them, building communities, we can feel part of something bigger than ourselves and build a stronger union of liberty and justice for all.

Website: www.sometimesbrilliant

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“Andy Warhol was a Hoarder” Nov 06, 2016

Award winning health and science journalist Claudia Kalb has inventively and successfully refocused our attention on 12 famous lives, and 12 turbulent minds. Was Andy Warhol a hoarder? Did Einstein have autism? Was Frank Lloyd Wright a narcissist?.

In her recent book, “Andy Warhol Was a Hoarder: Inside the Minds of History’s Great Personalities.”Claudia provides a glimpse into the lives of these celebrated historic icons through the lens of modern psychology.

With a light hearted tone, she tackles the big questions around our perception of those we think we know – distinguishing between the private self and the public image. Her in depth research highlights the power of diagnosis and the desire for normalcy, acceptance and accomplishment.

Website: claudiakalb.com

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Cinque Henderson on Education and What the Black Lives Matter Movement Can Learn From our Founding Fathers Oct 25, 2016

Journalist and author, Cinque Henderson, drills down on public education, funding, the perils of innovation, respectability politics, discipline, allies and Bob Dylan. As we find ourselves in the center of a burgeoning civil rights movement, Cinque asks the important questions regarding our current educational approach and system. Are we effectively serving the individual and the general population? What are the costs of keeping children in school when they are disrupting the system, and how is that same system failing these kids from underserved communities who need a safe, supportive environment more than anyone else to be able to realize their true capacity?

Mr. Henderson was a writer on HBO’s “The Newsroom.” His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic and The Washington Post. He has a new book on race and public education due out next year being published By St. Martins press.

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Vietnam and The Long Goodbye Sep 22, 2016

Unraveling the mystery of his friend’s death and coming to grips with his role and the sacrifices made during the Vietnam war. Having survived Khe Sanh – living under siege, shelled for 77 days straight, outgunned, engaged in a modern day trench warfare. “Never safe from death at any one moment.” Michael Archer, illuminates the military, political, and emotional aspects of a war that was controversial, brutal and ultimately forgotten.

With 58,000 American lives lost during the war (And an additional 125,000 lives are estimated to have been lost to suicide in the years following the war.) and nearly three million Vietnamese. Michael’s faith was challenged, feeling a sense of betrayal, and disillusioned with political leaders and the purpose of the war, the one thing that stayed steady was his devotion and loyalty to his brothers in war and his unfaltering commitment to the Marine credo, Semper Fidelis -Always faithful, no man left behind.

Over 40 years ago, and grown men are still brought to tears by the memory of leaving Tom Mahoney behind. Coming home to a hostile reception, alone, scarred and shamed, after a brutal and faltering war in Vietnam, the battle continued to remain “Always Faithful.”

Michael, like so many, had come undone. Until he began asking questions, searching for answers and ultimately reconnecting with the men of Khe Sanh, finding resolution and reconciliation with the enemy, the past and a clear path toward the future

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Dr. Mario Beauregard, PhD. Explores Mind and Consciousness, Beyond the Physical Brain Sep 17, 2016

Dr. Beauregard is the author of more than 100 publications in neuroscience, psychology and psychiatry. He was one of the first neuroscientists to use neuroimaging to investigate the neural underpinnings of voluntary control in relation to emotion. He is currently affiliated with the Department of Psychology, University of Arizona. He is the author of The Spiritual Brain: a neuroscientist’s case for the existence of the soul and Brain Wars: the scientific battle over the existence of the mind and proof that will change the way we live our lives. He is a visionary and pioneer illuminating the realities of our post materialist Universe and the shortcomings of reductionist and scientific materialist thinking.

Website: www.drmariobeauregard.com

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ProMom Sep 06, 2016

In the movie, The Intern, Robert Deniro’s character says, “I hate to be the feminist here, but…” in protest to the idea that Anne Hathaway’s character should have to accept her husband’s having an affair as a reasonable reaction to her explosive, demanding, successful career. ProMom asked how companies can create systems that truly support women during maternity and the transition back to the work force? And, then they provided some answers.

ProMom has developed a 10 week package which includes one on one meetings with the pregnant employee before going on maternity leave, in house meetings after birth and ongoing meetings once the employee returns to work to provide support to ensure a successful transition back into the workplace. The support includes meetings with managers, and teams as needed to address the needs of the institution and the returning mom and create a better support system and productive culture change!

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What is a Bibliotherapist, and Do I Need One? Aug 29, 2016

Ella Bearthoud first started practicing bibliotherapy with Susan Elderkin when they were literature students at Cambridge University in England. They just didn’t have a name for what they were doing at that time. They exchanged books to boost one another’s morale, confidence and troubled hearts. Over the ensuing years they prescribed literature to their friends and family, while Ella worked as an artist and Susan wrote her own novels. Their years long profession became official when they took positions at The School of Life as bibliotherapists for hire.

Jane Austin was prescribed to soldiers in WWII to ease their stress and remind them of the good aspects of normal British life. Harry Potter has helped students to boost their emotional intelligence and capacity for empathy. Whether one finds themselves depressed, anxious, facing a major life transition, loss or mid-life crisis, bibiliotherapy may just hold the Novel Cure.

Website: www.theschooloflife

Website: www.ellaberthoud

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Kara Maxwell Exemplifies the Mastery of Non-Traditional Medicine Aug 10, 2016

Chi, The Five Elements, Chinese Medicine, and the Art of Muscle Testing, traditional and respected in vast areas of the world, but non-traditional to many in the United States. For many, medicine in our culture has become too disconnected from nature. They seek a whole person approach that relies on the power of touch and the connectedness of systems.Expert practitioner, Kara Maxwell describes her relationship with energy, health and wellness. Kara has a degree in Anthropology with a concentration in physical anthropology with an emphasis of medical anthropology. She has completed graduate studies in MSOM, Chinese Medicine at Southwest Acupuncture College of Santa Fe and the Institute of Classical Five Element Acupuncture, as well as post graduate studies in Namburdripad’s Allergy Elimination Technique.

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Dare, Dream, Do: Remarkable Things Happen When You Dare to Dream Aug 09, 2016

I’ve been thinking about dreaming. Not the kind of dreaming we do in our sleep, but the kind we do while we are wide awake, with our eyes wide open. The kind that paves the way for our future and governs our every action and choice. The kinds of dreams that can sit on a shelf for a lifetime or create a life of expansion and self actualization. The kind that can terrify us or comfort us as we we move through the days, months and years of our lives. Innovative thinker and author, Whitney Johnson guides us through the process of daring and dreaming in a constructive manner, so that we may do to our heart’s content.

Website: whitneyjohnsonbooks.com

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Deborah Hernandez Speaks Up for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America Aug 08, 2016

Deborah Hernandez is a wife, mother and marketing communications consultant who has lived in Orange County, California, for more than 14 years. She volunteers her time as the Communications Lead for the California chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a grassroots organization that advocates for gun violence prevention policies.

Website: momsdemandaction.org

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Darrel Harris on Green Dot, Bullying and the Advocates Aug 08, 2016

Today my guest is Darrel Harris. She is the Education and Prevention Coordinator at the Advocates in Hailey, Idaho. She has spent the last thirty odd years doing what she can to end all power based personal violence, including bullying. Four years ago, she experienced a crisis of faith; but, her resolve and motivation have been reignited by a promising new program called Green dot. With this extremely well researched and detailed and comprehensive and meticulous program behind her she is once again hopeful and determined in her, and our, power to make a meaningful change and create communities that foster and support healthy relationships.

Website: theadvocates.org

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Creating Good Prose and the Art of a Working Friendship Aug 08, 2016

What makes a good story? And what elements must come together in perfect unison on the written page to make the eager reader sigh at the beauty of the passage? Well, Pulitzer Prize Winner, Tracy Kidder and acclaimed, editor Richard Todd have the answers – not only to the art of producing good prose, but to successful collaboration and maintaining a satisfying, life long relationship.

Website: tracykidder.com

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Chris Baty Knows how to Gather a Crowd and how to Write a Novel in 30 Days Aug 08, 2016

Chris Baty is the “accidental” founder of NaNoWriMo and the author of “No Plot? No Problem!: A Low Stress, High Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days” and co-author of “Ready, Set, Novel.” And if you’ve ever wondered if you have a novel in you, thought about what drives the creative process and what halts it in its tracks, he’s got the answers.

Website: chrisbaty.com

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Multi Media Artist Phil Hansen Aug 07, 2016

Artist Phil Hansen is a multi media creative daredevil of Ted Talk fame. He challenges himself, and his audience, to spark creativity by thinking inside the proverbial box. His theory is that by embracing limitations we can soar further than ever imagined. Early in his career, Hansen was challenged to embrace his limitations or walk away from the production of art entirely. As a pointillist artist experiencing neurological damage in his hands, he determined to embrace the shake. By embracing limitations and then going even further to self impose a few of his own, just for the fun of it, he has embarked on a prolific creative joy ride to see where being in the box can take us.

Website: philinthecircle.com

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Hip Hop Artist Andrew Fig Figueroa Mixed Race Mix Tape Aug 07, 2016

Andrew Fig Figueroa is an artist and performer. He is an up and coming Hip Hop artist, theatre maker and arts educator. He is the son of a Mexican father and British mother. Andrew, a graduate of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, created for his thesis project a work he wrote, produced and performed, a Hip-Hop theatre piece entitled, “Mixed-Race Mixtape.” The show explores the formation of Latin identity in the United States. The perspective is autobiographical and showcases Fig’s own ongoing struggle with developing a cohesive identity in the midst of a lifetime of funny, confusing and sometimes frightening interactions growing up “ambiguously brown” in America.

Website: mixedracemixtape.com

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Traveling Emergency Room Physician Dr. Meeta Patel Aug 06, 2016

Dr. Patel is a traveling Emergency Room Physician. She has traveled to India and Uganda to provide relief for underserved children and medical support to the underserved with Project Helping Hands. As a college student, Dr. Patel joined medical volunteer trips to Mexico, traveling to Acuna and Saltillo, Mexico. Upon competing her medical residency, she set off for New Zealand in the hopes that, “this is a start to a giving and rewarding life!”

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Tally Abecassis of First Day Back Podcast Aug 06, 2016

Tally Abecassis shares her experience of transitioning from a focused, successful documentary filmmaker to an unanticipated, full time role as a stay at home mom. With sensitivity and honesty, she exposes the constant struggle between balancing self, identity and devoted motherhood. Tally lets us tag along on her personal journey through her top rated podcast, First Day Back. Through her raw self reflection and her illuminating conversations with others, she conveys the intense social and internal pressure put upon working and stay at home moms, and the reality that each individual must find their own balance and peace.

Website: firstdaybackpodcast.com

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Cate Cox on the Empowerment of Women Aug 06, 2016

Cate Cox is an advocate for women’s empowerment. She is a Reiki practitioner, holds a Masters degree in Transpersonal Psychology and has been working as a professional Jazz singer for half a decade. She shares her thoughts and unique perspective on the modern era of empowered women and how they, and she, move through the world.

Website: catecox.com

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**Alex Laws Intuitive, Fitness, Business and Life Guru** Aug 06, 2016
Alex Laws is a world class athlete, business consultant, cancer survivor, and founder of Rythmatic Meditation, a unique cycling class offering a full body work out with an added component of meditation creating a body and mind connection. With proven success as an intuitive consultant, Alex has the ability, experience and knowledge to relate to many of life’s experience. Laws mission is to tap into everyone’s inner voice, or business core, to achieve a healthier existence and more fulfilling life.

Website: alexlaws.com

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Dr. Madeline Levine on Privilege and Raising Children Well Aug 06, 2016

Dr. Levine has been an active psychologist for the past 30 years, an educator and co-founder of Challenge Success -a project at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, and A New York Times bestselling author. She is a frequent speaker to parents under pressure discussing the perfect storm that undermines the wellbeing of their children: a culture of materialism, competition, unrelenting pressure to succeed at any cost, lack of emotional connection and the loss of the authentic self.

Website: madelinelevine.com

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Gerry Moffat Adventure Consultant to Bhutan Aug 05, 2016

Gerry Moffat first arrived in Nepal on a British kayaking expedition in 1983 at the age of 18. Over the next 20 years he became the first man to descend all the major rivers in the Nepalese Himalayas. In 1990 he established the first river company in northern Pakistan. Currently he serves as the whitewater consultant to the Kingdom of Bhutan. National Geographic regards him as the most experienced river guide in the Himalayas.

Website: thunderdragonmedia.com

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Sonia Sommer and Her Relationship to Body, Mind and Spiritual Vitality Aug 05, 2016

Sonia is a sought after Practitioner of Structural Integration, Sonia works with individuals from all walks of life with a focus on those seeking true transformation and personal evolution. After working with her, clients experience relief from pain in their bodies, and souls, while learning tools to take back control of their personal wellbeing and realign their lives.

Website: soniasommer.com

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Dr. Deb Robertson is a City Gal Running a Small Town ER Aug 05, 2016

Dr. Deborah Robertson knows what it’s like to operate in a crazed big city hospital emergency room. She wasn’t prepared for some of the challenges she’d face running a small town ER. Sure the pace was a bit slower, but operating on your neighbor could prove to be a delicate business.

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David Holmes on Education Aug 04, 2016

The future of education is a topic that affects us all. Common core, teaching to the test, methods and philosophies – they are all up for debate. Systems, children, teachers and the learning brain, how do we find the right answers to educate the whole child and support the development of successful individuals that can contribute to society and lead happy, productive lives? Lifelong Educator David Holmes weighs in.

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Sculptor Joseph Castle, Myth, Archetypes and the life of an Artist Aug 03, 2016

Artist, Joseph Castle takes us on a journey through his art. He says, “I believe we all have some type of myth running through our veins. Myths are stories about people and myths help us see ourselves within journeys, within narratives and going through things that so many others have gone through before us. By giving us a way to guide ourselves, myths strengthen us and help us find direction. Myths help us find spiritual footing and make the point that, because of culture, we are never truly alone.”

Website: castlesculpture.com

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Artists in Love and Life Aug 03, 2016

Steve Behal and Jeannie Catchpole are partners in art and life. They re-united after a 22 year hiatus and began a romantic love affair and a collaborative artistic journey. Steve was a film, television and theatre actor in Canada. He is an award winning photojournalist, painter and writer. Jeannie knew she wanted to be an artist from the age of five. It took her nearly a quarter of a century after meeting Steve, to know she wanted to be a co-painter with him.

Website: behalcatchpole.com

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Rebecca Rusch the Queen of Pain Aug 03, 2016

Rebecca Rusch is one of the world’s preeminent endurance athletes. She has won four straight Leadville 100s and is the course record holder. She is lovingly known as the Queen of Pain. There is nothing she likes better than to challenge herself each and every time she steps, or rides, to a starting line. With tenacity and grit, she keeps going through darkness, injuries, solitude, mechanical mishaps and flat tires. She digs deep to cross the finish line of every single race she begins.

Website: rebeccarusch.com

Website: http://www.rebeccasprivateidaho.com/

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Juniper Books the Art of Storytelling Inside and Out Aug 03, 2016

Thatcher Wine, the founder of Juniper books, custom collections, crafts custom book collections for purchase and creates and designs custom libraries for a variety of clients. Juniper books is a specialty bookseller with a focus on building custom libraries and creating unique book sets. Thatcher brings the library alive inside and out of the printed page. He is a visionary and artist who embraces the future while cherishing the past.

Website: juniperbooks.com

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Mike Scullion is the Heart and Soul of Community Radio Aug 02, 2016

Mike Scullion wanted to start a community radio station where locals could get vocal. He is the heart and soul behind KDPI radio. Mike shares what it is about radio, music and Sun Valley that makes his relationship with music and community radio run so dang deep.

Website: kdpifm.org

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Dr. Stuart Brown Appreciates the Importance of Play Jul 30, 2016

Ever wonder if there was an enjoyable way to diminish anxiety and depression, a non stressful solution to sustain intimacy, increase longevity, innovation and adaptability? Well this simple four letter word may just be the answer. Play fosters stress management, personal resiliency and is a successful method for relieving anxiety and depression. Join us in conversation with Dr. Stuart Brown, author of “Play: How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination and invigorates the soul.”

Website: thenationalinstituteforplay.org

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Louise Steinman and the Crooked Mirror Jul 30, 2016

Author and literary curator at ALOUD, Louise Steinman discusses her work, family and incredible personal journey to discover the path of reconciliation and mending. Her literary memoir illuminates the intensity, challenges, and ultimate healing and joy in the process of Polish -Jewish reconciliation post Word War II.

Website: louisesteinman.com

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One Bad Mother, or Two Jul 30, 2016

Creators and co- hosts of the humorous and relevant podcast, One Bad Mother, Biz Ellis and Theresa Thorn join me to discuss motherhood, feminism, the unrelenting pressure of parenting and leaving no mom behind.

Website: onebadmother.com

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National Brotherhood of Skiers Hit the Snow Jul 30, 2016

The National Brother of Skiers mission is to identify, develop and support athletes of color who will win international and Olympic winter sports competitions representing the United States and to increase participation in winter sports. Learn about the organization, its members and their relationships to winter sports, each other and the communities in which they gather.

Website: nationalbrotherhoodofskiers.org

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Brian Boitano Gets Cooking Jul 28, 2016

Brian Boitano has a life long relationship with Sun Valley, Idaho. He’s been skating there since he was a kid, so it’s only fitting that he returns to his home away from home to share his next phase of life as a chef and lifestyle expert.

Website: brianboitano.com

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Photographer and Adventurer Caroline Woodham Jul 28, 2016

Caroline Woodham discusses the art and business of her life as a photographer. She tells us what inspired her to pick up a camera at such a young age, and what it’s been like to view the world through the camera’s lens from that day on.

Website: woodhamphoto.com

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Brad Cleveland Jul 26, 2016

Brad Cleveland is known globally as one of the foremost experts in customer strategy, management and service delivery. A pioneer in the industry, he has been a driving force in defining customer service value and processes for delivering that value while creating lifetime customers.

Website: bradcleveland.com

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Film Critic John Desando Jul 26, 2016

John DeSando is a popular radio host, personality, college professor and film critic. He is a thoughtful connoisseur, and entertainingly shares his deep and prolific relationship to film.

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Doniece Sandoval Provides Showers for the Homeless Jul 26, 2016

Doniece Sandoval is delivering dignity one shower at a time. She is the founder of Lave Mae, a nonprofit mobile shower project for San Francisco’s over 6,000 homeless. Lave Mae is refitting decommissioned Muni-buses and parking them in accessible locations to serve those in need.

Website: lavamae.org

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Panache Desai Jul 26, 2016

We could all use some guidance and support in finding our true purpose and navigating our paths to realizing our true potential. Panache Desai offers tools and example to fully engage in your life from a place of connection. He offers methods to become more empowered to navigate life, to be supported and to live in alignment. Panache Desai is a contemporary thought leader, spiritual teacher and author of “Discovering Your Soul Signature: A 33 Day Path to Purpose, Passion and Joy.”

Website: panachedesai.com

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Dr. James Doty Jul 26, 2016

Dr. James Doty is a professor, neurosurgeon and founder of CCARE at Stanford University. He is a successful inventor, entrepreneur and philanthropist. Here, he discusses his relationship to neuroscience and compassion.

Website: intothemagicshop.com

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Making Whiskey at the High West Distillery Jul 26, 2016

David Perkins moved to Park City, Utah in 2004 to pursue his passion to make whiskey. With a background as a biochemist in the biopharmaceutical industry, a love of bourbon from being raised in Georgia, and a love of cooking, David knew he was fated to make whiskey. After learning the secrets of making really, good whiskey from distillers in Kentucky and Scotland, David started a distillery and became the proud proprietor of High West Distillery and Saloon in Park City Utah.

Website: highwest.com

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A Former Soldier’s Battle with PTSD, Identity and Place Jul 26, 2016

George Nickel shares his story of how post-traumatic stress, alcohol abuse, and how a mission to find his dog led to an armed standoff with the Boise Police Department. The lethal force encounter would have ended very differently if not for the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Training provided to law enforcement. In addition, Nickel describes his role as the driving force behind starting the Veterans Court in Boise, ID, and establishing the Idaho Veterans Network.

Website: idahoveteransnetwork.org

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Bea Johnson on How to Live a Zero Waste LIfestyle Jul 25, 2016

Bea Johnson explains what it takes to live a zero waste lifestyle with a family of four. Bea shares how they live, travel, shop and socialize while living a life committed to their values to reduce, reuse and recycle. Bea walks the talk and is ultimately far happier for it.

Website: zerowastehome.com

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Drawing your way to the future with Patti Dobrowolski Jul 20, 2016

Patti Dobrowolski captivates and inspires audiences using the business leadership tool of the future: Drawing Solutions. “Up Your Creative Genius.” Pictures are how the brain makes stories and makes sense of the world around us. Patti explains, “We all have something we want to change in our lives” and you have an 80% higher chance of achieving your dream if you draw a picture of it.

Website: pattidobrowolski.com

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Get Sparked with Lisa Rueff Jul 05, 2016

Lisa Rueff, founder of Sparked, Yoga Ventures and Global Buddha, asked the question, “What if a game could bring out the best in women, touch their hearts, fire up their dreams, draw them closer… and be addictively fun?” And after being stuck in a cabin for a long weekend playing the antithesis of that- Cards Against Humanity- she decided it was up to her to create the answer. And, so she did. She created Sparked – a game made for women, by women. It’s inspirational, aspirational and full of heart and soul. Within minutes of playing Sparked, women are laughing, clapping, sharing intimate struggles and desires, and cheering each other on!Play matters, and what we play matters just as much!

Website: readysetsparked.com

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Innovation Expert Whitney Johnson Encourages Us to Disrupt Yourself Jun 29, 2016

Innovation expert, Whitney Johnson, discusses the psychology of disruption. Humans crave and need challenge to move forward. We need to be learning and feel a sense of progress to be happy in our lives. When boredom and complacency set in at the top, we become stagnant and depressed. Johnson guides us through the twists and turns of the S curve of disruption, teaching us what we can expect from it, and how to make the most of it.

Website: whitneyjohnson.com

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What Does it Mean to be a Skeptic? Jun 23, 2016

How is it that we determine what to believe? What is a discernible truth and how do science and faith fit into the mix? Is being a skeptic an optimistic or pessimistic approach? And wouldn’t it be nice if everyone did a little more critical thinking for themselves?

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What is Synesthesia? Jun 23, 2016

In it’s simplest form, synesthesia is a multi-dimensional sensory experience. Have you ever seen a color connected to a letter or word, or tasted a specific taste when you heard a sound? If so, you may be a synesthete. Join me and Dr. Veronica Gross as we explore the mysteries of cognition and the conscious and unconscious minds, empathy, and the relationships between individual and shared experience.

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