Doc’s Thoughts I’ve written before about how we are instant-gratification, pleasure-seeking, pain-avoiding monkeys. We are primates, and our nervous system (including our brain) is fundamentally wired to seek out what is pleasurable and to avoid what is painful. These operating instructions evolved to keep us alive and reproducing in an uncertain and sometimes hostile environment, and in that context, they work well. The problem is that survival is not the same thing as happiness. In our...
7 days ago • 3 min read
Doc’s Thoughts When we think of craftsmanship, we typically think of skilled trades that straddle the practical and the artistic– carpenters, tailors, furniture makers, jewelers, metal workers, bakers. While the craftsmen mentality is strongly focused on whatever the craft is, across crafts there is a devotion to becoming particularly skilled through repeated practice, taking pride in high-quality work, and a dedication to the craft. The joy derives from the process, from the making, rather...
14 days ago • 4 min read
Doc’s Thoughts This is a bit of different weekly post. This one is a roundup of previous writing I’ve done around the New Year. But first, if you didn’t read the holiday posts on love, peace, and joy. Last week, I talked about how curiosity can be the engine of change. Turns out, I’ve written about New Years (and New Years adjacent) topics quite a bit. Rather than do another post, I thought I’d dust off the archive a bit. Here’s a bit of a round-up: Setting intentions rather than goals as we...
21 days ago • 1 min read
Doc’s Thoughts Given my interest in growth and change, the New Year offers a natural segue for reflection. This year, my thinking about change centers on curiosity and experimentation. When we notice a gap between where we are and where we would like to be, the problem is rarely a lack of information. We generally know what to do. The difficulty lies in closing that gap—making time, setting priorities, finding the courage to face our fears, or even naming them in the first place. One way to...
28 days ago • 4 min read
Doc’s Thoughts This time of year, injunctions to be joyful are everywhere—on cards, lawn decorations, storefronts, and signs. We seem to treat joy as a switch to turn on– we were not so into it in October, and we’ll be over it come January, but now ‘tis the season. And yet joy often feels elusive. The irony is that this elusiveness is not a failure of effort, planning, or even intention. It is a consequence of how we relate to joy in the first place. The problem is not that we want joy, but...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Doc’s Thoughts Last week I wrote about love. Another sentiment that reliably surfaces this time of year is peace. Like love, peace is a word we use often and define loosely, carrying weight but not precision. As I’ve written about before, how we define peace depends heavily on how we define the opposite of peace. If we define the opposite of peace as war, then peace becomes the absence of armed conflict. If we define peace as the opposite as torment, it becomes tranquility, quiet, or rest....
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Doc’s Thoughts We talk about love a lot during the holidays. We think about it in the context of our families—our parents, siblings, children, and extended relatives. We think about love in the context of our shared humanity, and the connection between love and generosity. For many, love is one of the key emotions of the season. We often think of it as a positive force, and something to cultivate (it is both!), but we rarely stop to consider what love actually is. For something so widely...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Doc’s Thoughts We often think about the importance of having—and being—a positive role model. We make choices we hope our children will emulate and try to surround ourselves with people we admire. Positive influences matter for all kinds of reasons, and many of us put real effort into cultivating them. But not everyone in our life is a great model. Family members, coworkers, neighbors, people in our social circle—there are always a few whose choices and patterns make us think, yikes, not...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Doc’s Thoughts Broaden your perspective. Live a happy, healthy, meaningful life. Subscribe to Doc's Thoughts Gratitude is a funny thing. It’s a terribly helpful corrective to our human tendency to see problems. It has the ability to get us out of a difficult headspace, or shift our perspective when we are feeling like nothing is going our way. Gratitude can move our attention from what’s missing to what’s present, interrupt negative thought spirals and help us recover faster from setbacks. It...
2 months ago • 4 min read