BORING NEVER SELLS:
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Give Thanks for All the Times of Your Life

Last week, on a windswept plateau in France’s agricultural heartland, I walked around a pathless neolithic burial ground of dolmens. No other living person was there, yet the place felt serenely alive with memories of humanity’s path. The dignity of that collective past lives in each of us.

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Live Life in Technicolor! Not Shades of Gray.

Being “busy” for the sake of busy-ness is living in a gray world. Being addicted to your phone is living in a gray world. It doesn’t matter if you live in 5 or 50 shades of gray, it’s all gray. How you greet life is what you’ll get out of it.

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Getting Around Trivial Irritations—Before They Get You

It’s springtime in New York. Blossoms are blooming! The days are growing longer! The crowds are growing larger. The traffic is growing louder. “PEOPLE!” As Gossamer, the pink furry monster screeches in panic at the end of an old Bugs Bunny cartoon. I’ve got a better answer than running away.

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Don’t Be Bored: Celebrate Spring Instead!

“If you’re bored, you’re boring.” That was a hilarious line growled by Brenda Vaccaro in a trashy 1980s TV show. Trashy or not, there’s wisdom in that line.

We succumb to boredom if we let our brains be lazy. Being lazy—being bored—is practicing being dead.

Don’t practice being dead. When the time comes, we’ll all do it just fine.

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A Valentine of Peace, Calm, Tranquility

Many financial professionals achieve great success in their work. Few succeed in achieving contentment, satisfaction and happiness in their Being. My Valentine to all of you is a 2½-minute exercise to let your Being breathe while gentle winds clear away anxieties and give you renewed, endless access to peace.

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The Original Diversity and Inclusion: The Earth’s Bounty

Earth Day. April 22. It’s too bad that humanity can only manage to honor the Earth for one day. But here’s a 12th-century Persian poem and a 20th-century Finnish orchestral work that can help you treasure the mystery, the magic, the power and the glory of the world throughout the year, and throughout your life.

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Give Your Inner Commander a Worthy Mission

Everyone wants to have presence, but they don’t know how to get there. Resolutely practicing happiness can get you toward a compelling presence faster and farther than almost anything else you do. It takes a bit of effort to choose to be happy. But you have a “self” that can make that happen.

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Practicing Diversity, Conscience and Integrity

It’s one thing to practice diversity and inclusion when it’s easy or a corporate “mandate.” It’s far different to uphold diversity when it costs you personally. That’s when the conscience of an individual is tested.

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“Be Your Authentic Self.” Which One?

Don’t be an adjective. Be a dictionary.

I’m wary of words that get bloated with branding and co-opted by the corporate world. People who tell you to “be your authentic self” usually mean well, but that adjective is one big can of connotations!

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Communicating Beyond Alzheimer’s Fog

Alzheimer’s cloaks whole families in a slow procession of grief as we try to help someone through a disjointed journey from one life to the next.

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Balancing Being with Busy-ness

At various points in anyone’s growth toward a more conscious life, they have to undertake the “Hero’s Journey.” Myths, like that of Perseus and Andromeda, hold clues about how to do this.

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The Alchemy Behind Presence

We can learn a lot from the early harbingers of vegetative joy. Crocuses! Forsythia! Daffodils!

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Rumor Has It…

Rumor is a great way to kill conscience, consciousness, presence and happiness.

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You Want Presence? Savor Your Breath!

Presence comes in a lot of different shades. But one thing is the same for anyone with notable presence: they learned how to control (or stop) all the busy-ness and experience their Being—deeply and profoundly. That ability goes very far toward finding wisdom…and living there.

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Strengthen Your Capacity for Empathy

Civilizations—east and west—have given us a treasure trove of clues to help each of us grow in understanding, wisdom and happiness. But it’s not the rulers or the religions that matter: it’s the art and music they leave behind. Here’s a beautiful cross-cultural combination that can help us all replenish our empathy and compassion even though we’re living “in interesting times.”

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Gravitas: It’s Not About You

It’s a few days after Biden’s inauguration, and I’m struck by two examples of gravitas. One, a 22-year-old poet. The other, a 68-year-old law professor. One’s eyes shine secretly with an ever-present sense of purpose. The other’s eyes glow quietly with the contentment of a life lived with purpose. One has just entered the world’s notice. The other has just departed. Both know the honor, dignity and joy of purpose. Both can help you change gravitas from a vague concept to a daily “prayer in action”.

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Where are you Going?
Night Journey to the New Year, the New You

At the start of each year, many of us make resolutions, plan projects, promise to reach goals—essentially plotting out the future. But along with asking big questions and looking for sturdy solutions, we need to be more than ready for change. We need to remember how to search for options when very little of the future seems clear. Here’s a five-minute exercise to reawaken the Searcher in all of us.

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A Great Year-end Self-evaluation

Overachievers are hideously bad at celebrating their successes. A minute after they’ve crossed some proverbial finish line, they’re already parsing what they did wrong. Why it wasn’t that great. Why it’s not good enough. Why they are not good enough. Here’s a four-minute exercise to help change that.

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Rise and Shine!

More than a few ill winds attack our sense of control and well-being nowadays. Add to that, ‘tis the season of SAD—seasonal affective disorder—in the northern hemisphere. Just dragging yourself out of bed can be a struggle that starts your day in a decidedly downbeat mode. But here’s a 90-second morning ritual that can help you rise and shine and gladly greet each day.

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Tranforming Gratitude…and You

Many of us have lost the roadmap to deep and transformative gratitude—a core component in building your individual presence. COVID-19 and a year of rancid political maneuvering has corroded the soul of society—and the individuals within that fabric.

Here’s a 10-minute piece of music that can help re-ignite the journey toward becoming the larger you that your soul knows you can be.

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Keeping Your Cool in a Crazy World

In this Time of Twitter, we’re force-fed tons of anxiety-producing news. What we gain is ulcers and a personal world full of instability. But you can counter the craziness with a five-minute exercise to strengthen your peace, maintain “grace under fire,” and learn to float above the fray.

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Using Your Creative Imagination

If cabin-fever is getting to you, here’s an invigorating 6-minute imagination journey that’s better (and safer) than a weekend getaway!

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Resurrecting Happiness

Being unhappy never makes any situation better. But sometimes life can put you into a black hole of despair. I’ve got a two-minute imagination exercise to get you out, lift your spirits and reclaim your ability to be happy.

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Video: To Fix Time, Change Space

In a very loose application of Einstein’s time-space continuum, you can fix your “fight or flight” impulse that has your heart racing and your mouth spitting out words like machine-gun bullets.

Video: The Trap of Self-confidence

If you think you need more self-confidence, you’ll only wind up exhausted with fear and neurosis on a 24-hour basis. There’s a better way to gain and maintain confidence.