Life Principles
We can’t live a meaningful life if we don’t know which values and principles are most important. The best life principles are tested by time and experience.
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The Right Way to Live with Regret and Anxiety
Regret and anxiety are an inseparable part of being human. But we can learn, in the words of Kierkegaard, “to be anxious in the right way.”
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Gratitude: The Most Misunderstood Virtue
Gratitude is essential to our happiness, but is a more complex concept than we might at first assume.
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Why Creation Hurts (and Why It’s Worth It)
Understanding the need for creative struggle will helps us get through the toughest patches.
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Hope and Imagination: A Poet’s Guide to Coping with Sadness
Hope requires imagination. It requires that we see our sadness from some new vantage or angle. You might think this is naive; my reply is, “Life shouldn’t be any more unbearable than necessary.”
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On Contentment: A Riddle for the Ages
Diogenes of Sinope was one of the more colorful ancient philosophers. He lived a threadbare existence by choice and got all his food from begging. Instead of a house, he lived in a large ceramic jar (a genus of hermit crabs is named after him for this reason). “He has the most who is content…
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Love, Work, and the Need to Know Yourself
Freud once said that “love and work” is the key to being a complete person. But what does that look like for each of us?
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You Should Not Be Careful Who You Love
“You should care about things in a way that makes it a possibility that tragedy will happen to you.”
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The Lost Art of Radical Attention
“Attention” is in short supply these days. According to one researcher, in just twelve years we’ve gone from being able to focus on a task for two and a half minutes to a mere 40 seconds. Our modern world is flooded with ads, apps, endless infotainment, and “bite-sized” everything you can think of. On a…
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Why Bronze Medalists Are Happier
Why downward counterfactual thinking is a fast track to the most creative kind of gratitude there is.
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The Most Important Character Trait That No One Cares About
Our society today values hard work, success and efficiency but rarely do we talk about the importance of wisdom.
