Here is typical scenario from when my children were younger: It’s five o’clock in the morning. I’ve been awake for about 23 hours, having struggled vainly to fit in writing between yesterday’s tasks: getting the car fixed, taking the dog to the vet, answering email, grocery shopping, driving my kids to music lessons, seeing clients, picking up deli sandwiches for dinner, and cuddling one of my children through some of the horrors of growing up. I finally sat down at my computer around midnight—and looked up just now to see the sun rising.
Since I’m up, I decide to set [...]
Until I was about 30, I spent most of my time trying to make sure that no one ever became upset with me. I tiptoed around disagreements, swallowed my opinion, tried to read other people’s thoughts, and ran away at the slightest hint of discord. Not fighting was ruining my relationships.
If this sounds weird to you, you don’t understand intimacy. Conflict in close relationships is not only inevitable, it’s essential. Intimacy connects people who are inevitably different – as the saying goes, if two people agree about everything, one of them is superfluous. Conflict is the mechanism by which we [...]First of all, I wish to say a huge thank you to everyone who, acting on good will and perhaps a tiny dose of insanity, has already purchased my new book even thought technically it does not yet exist. We managed to get into the top 200 bestsellers on Amazon for a considerable period, which means that this nonexistent volume actually trounced innumerable books that are actual physical products. All of you who preordered have my most heartfelt gratitude.
Speaking of things that happen before they exist, as I was writing Finding Your Way in a Wild New World, which, [...]
In the Uncle Remus story of the tar baby, Brer Rabbit picks a fight with a lifelike doll made out of tar and turpentine. The tar baby is so gluey that when the rabbit punches it, his fists get hopelessly stuck. He tries to kick his way free, trapping his feet, then finishes off with an infuriated head butt that renders him utterly helpless.
I can’t think of a more fitting metaphor for family life in the 21st century. There’s nothing in the world as sticky as a dysfunctional family. You can put half your life’s savings into therapy—good therapy, [...]
If you are reading this with mounting excitement, thinking about the wonderful parties you’re going to throw or attend this holiday season, allow me to congratulate you. I’m one of the millions of party-impaired individuals who stand in awe of people like you—people who love to entertain, meet new friends, cavort with fun-loving crowds. When you invite the rest of us to your celebrations, we are honored, even though it brings us the same joy we’d feel if you handed us a large, angry scorpion.
For party-phobes like myself, it’s a struggle to remember in the celebratory horrors of the [...]You’ve probably heard of something called the 80/20 rule. It was authored by the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who found that in his country 20% of the people owned 80% of the wealth. Later on, business managers began using the 80/20 rule (or the Pareto principle) to increase their productivity. At a rough estimate, 20% of the company’s employees created 80% of the company’s useful work. If you apply the 80/20 rule to your life, you’ll find that a similar dynamic exists in almost everything you do: Twenty percent of your interpersonal activities create 80% of your sense of [...]
Explore deeper
Development
Alchemy + Aim