Our Inner Happiness Thermostat: Why We Worry When Life Starts Getting Good
Picture a quiet Sunday afternoon. The laundry is done, everyone is healthy, and for once, there doesn’t seem to be anything urgent that needs our attention. Maybe we’re sitting with a cup of coffee, enjoying a little peace and quiet. And then, out of nowhere, a thought sneaks in. Things are going pretty well. I […]
How to Stay Kind During Election Week Without Giving Up What We Believe
Not many of us have ever changed someone’s mind in a comment section. Plenty of us have lost an entire Tuesday evening trying. If we’ve been anywhere near a screen, a kitchen table, a waiting room, a church parking lot or a family group text lately, we’ve probably noticed the temperature. It’s election week. The […]
Plot Twist: You’re the One Writing the Scary Story
Halloween is the one month a year the whole world agrees to be a little unhinged in public. Yard skeletons are somehow twelve feet tall and playing volleyball. Someone at the office shows up as a shark eating a man in a rowboat, and nobody asks why. It’s easy to see why Halloween is so […]
Ghosts of Regret: What Living With Old Mistakes Does to Our Hearts and Minds (And three simple ways to show them the door)
The movie Young Washington has been making the rounds this year, and one thing keeps coming up in the conversations around it. People walked in expecting a history lesson and walked out thinking about their own lives. That seems to be the common surprise. Most of us figured on some powdered wigs, a few battles, […]
The Skateboard We Didn’t Know We Needed – Why a “new set of wheels” can be good for the heart and mind
This video made the rounds in our community recently, and more than one of us nearly spilled our coffee laughing. A baby turtle, just doing his turtle thing. Slow. Steady. Inching across the floor like he has nowhere to be until Thursday. Then his owner sets him on a tiny toy skateboard. And suddenly […]
The Friendship Recession: Why Good Friendships Drift and How to Find Our Way Back
A lot of us have a name like this somewhere in our phones. Someone who used to be the first call when anything happened. Good news, bad news, the “you will not believe what just happened” news. Then life got full. Theirs probably did too. Nobody did anything wrong. The calls just slowed down. And […]
Quiet Cracking: What It Looks Like When Everything Gets Done and Something Still Feels Off
There’s a version of this we hear again and again around here, in different words, but sounding a lot like the same thing. “I got everything done again this week. I couldn’t really tell you what I felt about any of it.” Usually it comes with a small laugh, like the laugh makes it easier […]
What 6,000 Burned-Out Lightbulbs Have to Do With a Rough Week
Let’s be honest about something right up front. Most of us could not try something 10,000 times. Ten, maybe. Twelve if there’s coffee. Somewhere around attempt fourteen, a lot of us are on the couch narrating our own downfall to the dog. And the dog is not taking notes. So when the famous Thomas Edison […]
Five Minutes Outside Isn’t Going to Fix It, But It Might Steady You
There is a kind of hard week that doesn’t look particularly hard from the outside. Nothing is on fire. Nobody would call it a crisis. You get up, you do the things, you answer what needs answering. Maybe someone you love is having a rough go and you’re the one checking in on them, and […]
How to Get Out of the Complaint Spiral (Without Pretending Everything Is Fine)
There’s a moment most of us know very well. Someone complains about the thing. The traffic. The group chat. The meeting that should have been an email. The person who took the last cup of coffee and left approximately three drops in the pot, because apparently that counts as “not empty.” Someone else joins in. […]