Nothing comes without a price. But we’re richer than we think. — A father and his young daughter were walking through the county fair in their hometown, looking at the displays. …

There are better ways to motivate yourself — Shortly after starting graduate school I attended a speech the department had put together to motivate new students. The speaker was a well-respected scholar, and I was eager to hear what he had to say. To my chagrin, it was advice that I had actively rejected for years. “If you…

What do you do when you have to start over again? — There are many metaphors for human willpower. About ten years ago the hot metaphor for willpower among psychologists was a battery. Ego Depletion Theory, advanced by Dr. Roy Baumeister, treated willpower as a finite resource; one that could be spent only so much before it had to be recharged. Baumeister’s…

You rock, even when everything is on fire — Ihave been having a bad day. To clarify; I’m not trolling for sympathy. I have a few people close to me who I can lean on when everything goes south. So, on bad days, I have people to talk to. The reason I bring it up is that I’ve been…

How do we find the simple core of self-care? — Meet Skipper. Skipper is a labradoodle. He is also one-hundred percent, purebred goodboy. I’m not sure how the details work out on that, genetically, but he pulls it off with pizzazz. Skipper is my favorite antidepressant; just being around him makes my day better. My mother jokingly refers to him…

How to shift from ‘I am’ to ‘I will’ — In college I learned an exercise that drastically improved my writing skills. Writers call the practice E-prime. To write in e-prime, simply omit any version of the word “to be” from your prose. Drop is, am, are, were, or was, and also their cousins — the isn’ts, the will-bes, the…

The path home will wait for you — I was thirteen when I first heard Kansas’ song Carry on, Wayward Son. It immediately became my personal anthem. I have never grown tired of it. I suppose it is strange to identify so strongly with a song from a generation before me? But some songs transcend their decade; Carry…

Your heart deserves more than dismissal — There was a brief time as I came out of my depression when I didn’t realize that I had regained my capacity for normal emotion. My emotions have always been mildly disengaged. I once cat-napped through a fire alarm. During my depression, however, the quiescence intensified; some subtle but vital…

The tragedy of self-gatekeeping — Morning larks drive me crazy. Not all of them. If you’re reading this, there is a good chance you are an early riser. Stick with me for a bit, because I care about you and I promise that this is not a shame-the-lark article. …