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If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter or have looked at the Location page on my website recently, you already know this news item: I’m moving my office! Effective 1/30/12, my office will move to 1006 4th Street, Suite 302, in the old California Fruit Building in downtown Sacramento. It turns out that this a building with some interesting history attached to it – it is the oldest reinforced concrete ‘high rise’ west of the Mississippi, and at ...

Things change. Fast. It’s easy to forget that when we’re in the midst of a rough week at work, a fight with our spouse, or a child’s tantrum, but it’s true. As more years add up in the rear-view mirror of my life, the impermanence of everything in our world gets more and more airtime in my mind. For me, it can be easy to slip into a state of sadness about this when I realize how fleeting some of ...

Who doesn’t like Pixar? (Actually, I do know one person who doesn’t, but it seems like just about everyone is a fan, with good reason.) How is it that a movie studio has been able to have such a run of critical and commercial successes?

Well, it’s built into their culture – and it turns out that they take a very different approach to mistakes than many of us. Rather than try to avoid mistakes, cover them up, or ...

Big Think is a great site for learning more about different ideas and some of the new knowledge we’re developing in different areas, I enjoy it a lot.

Recently, they posted this article about a new book on decision making from a Nobel Prize-winning Psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, “Thinking Fast & Slow“.

Essentially, it explores our two different mental systems – “fast thinking” and “slow thinking”.

“According to Kahneman, there are very few circumstances in which system ...

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14
DEC

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We live in a fast-paced world where just about everyone seems to be concerned about how to get more done in less time. While there are a lot of great ways to be more efficient, shortcutting your decision making process is not one of them. (Shrinking your to-do list, on the other hand, is a great tool, but that’s a subject for another post.)

It can be tempting to rush the decision-making process, but it’s often a bad deal in the ...

When I made the decision to become a parent, I did it with a clear awareness that one of my ‘jobs’  as a parent would be that of teacher. While my parents had many strengths, teaching, especially for my father, was not one of them. From an early age, I was often self-taught, and that has created some challenges and frustrations for me in adulthood. As a result of this, I have been particularly determined that my daughter gets a ...

Ran across this article yesterday, important information for those of you with young children.  The main point of the article:

In a study published in the November issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, nearly 40 percent of young adults who said they had tried suicide said that they made their first attempt before entering high school.

The researchers also found that suicide attempts during childhood and adolescence were linked to higher scores of depression at the time of the attempts…

It’s ...

As if there weren’t enough reasons to avoid giving antipsychotic drugs to children, this article discusses research suggesting an increased risk of diabetes for children who use antipsychotic drugs (on top of the already known risk of weight gain – do a Google search on Zyprexa & weight gain for some disturbing reading.)

Let me be clear here: I think that our society significantly overuses psychotropic medications. I think it’s from a combination of factors: the drug companies continuing ...

Most of my clients can tell you that I’m a big fan of meditation. It was an invaluable tool for me while I was studying for my licensing exams, and has been helpful in my own efforts to manage stress, anxiety, & reactivity in my life.

This article from ABC news talks about some new research from Yale University on the benefits of meditation. From the story:

“Meditation isn’t a cure for mental illness, Brewer said, but he said his ...

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23
NOV

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(This was originally posted on ‘Happy Now, Sad Later’ a couple of years back. It may be even more relevant now than it was then. This version is revised.)

Really, I mean it. Have we become so used to and so self-righteous about our ‘right’ to pleasurable feelings that we’ve lost sight not only of our ability to tolerate discomfort, but also the benefits that might come from pushing ourselves beyond our comfort zone?

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not some ...