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....
8 days 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...
15 days 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...
22 days 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...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Doc’s Thoughts Broaden your perspective. Live a happy, healthy, meaningful life. Subscribe to Doc's Thoughts When I sat down to write this, I was struggling with ideas. I stared at the blinking cursor, feeling it mock me from the screen, and wracked my brain for something—anything—to hold onto. Several half-formed ideas raced around my head, but grabbing one, and actually putting it down into words, proved elusive. Feeling progressively more stuck, I got up, put on my coat, and took a walk....
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Doc’s Thoughts Broaden your perspective. Live a happy, healthy, meaningful life. Subscribe to Doc's Thoughts This past weekend, I overheard a neighbor talking about getting her groceries delivered. “I’ve already put in my Costco and Target order.” As a way of getting food to the house, this is highly efficient. It might take half an hour to put the order together, but it's much less time than driving to the stores and picking everything up. Later that day, my wife and I walked to a local...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Doc’s Thoughts Broaden your perspective. Live a happy, healthy, meaningful life. Subscribe to Doc's Thoughts Most of the problems we face in our life do not have simple solutions. For someone struggling with weight, for example, there are likely a multitude of challenges: lack of time to prepare food, lack of time/desire/ability to exercise, stress from work/home life/kids, complicated feelings about food, challenges about who will eat certain foods within the household, grocery shopping,...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Doc’s Thoughts Broaden your perspective. Live a happy, healthy, meaningful life. Subscribe to Doc's Thoughts I frequently talk with patients who do not want to take medication. It's pretty understandable; nobody wants to take pills. No one wants to start taking insulin. No one wants to wear CPAP at night. Sometimes, people are relieved or hopeful about starting medication, but not really excited. I spend a lot of my time talking to people about things nobody wants. Illness, disease, serious...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Doc’s Thoughts Broaden your perspective. Live a happy, healthy, meaningful life. Subscribe to Doc's Thoughts I am often taken with the power of stories to convey better, with deeper meaning, and more efficiently, complex or difficult to explain ideas. A few weeks ago, I wrote a post that was basically two stories; I got good feedback. ### Jack grew up poor. He hated it. He would watch important men in suits walk by and think, One day, that’s going to be me.He dreamed of driving a beautiful...
2 months ago • 3 min read