Happiness In Your Day — The Quality of Life — The Highest Art

Key to Happiness?

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
~ Henry David Thoreau

Perhaps this is one of the keys to happiness, especially if we think about how we can make another being’s quality of the day a little better — paying a small compliment, feeding the birds, holding the door, picking up trash that missed the can, walking your dog. The list of little things we can do for each other is endless. The bonus

Anxiety and the Internet

Social Media, the Internet, Anxiety and your mind.

As a teacher of mindfulness meditation, I’m always interested in research that looks at the effects of modern life on our minds. Some recent research by Larry D. Rosen, PhD, California State University, shows some interesting finding about the effects of social media and high internet use on children’s and teenagers minds. Many of you are parents so I thought it would be useful to share this with

Journey Towards Healing

I’ve often given the following poem to clients who are struggling with changing their lives and are down on themselves for not being able to change faster. It is intended to give us hope so we can continue our journey. When we are in our own personal “hole” it is so difficult to see our way. Most of us tend to beat ourselves up which only digs our own hole even deeper.

So here’s my summer gift to all of my readers. Please enjoy!

Autobiography in Five Chapters

I walk down the street,
There is a

Rude, Angry Drivers?

I was recently interviewed for a Yahoo health blog on the subject of dealing with rude or angry drivers. I want to share my responses with all of you. Here’s a link to the posting:

Managing Your Anger With Rude Drivers.

I hope you enjoy. I’m interested in your feedback. Please post your thoughts or concerns.

Larry

Stress Less for Success: Turn Stress And Anxiety To Play

Stress and Anxiety Are Made In Our Mind

Happy Fall and an abundant Thanksgiving! It’s been a busy and wonderful summer and now that most of us are again dealing with work, school and the upcoming holiday season, I feel it is a good time to write about stress and how to manage it.

Most of us experience stress and anxiety as something that is caused by events outside of our own personal awareness

“If my boss would only back off I’d be able

Airport Lessons on Anger

Anger Hurts, You and Others

On-time, on-time, on-time, . . .

San Francisco, scheduled for 9:00AM, now 10:05AM. I’m mad! An uncomplicated trip to the airport, pleasant drivers, helpful people checking me in and an easy rite of passage through security; all gone because I get to my concourse only to discover my flight is delayed. If they’d announced the delay before I left my house I would of stayed home longer, I pout to myself. My anger wipes out all of the good feelings generated by the relative pleasantness of the day until now. I know that:

anger

The Loss of Loss

Every day we get out of bed and assume that our day will mostly go according to plan; my job will be there, the people I care about will be there, my home my car. We don’t think “gee, today might be the day I get in a bad car accident on the way to work!” If we did think the worst, we might not get out of bed! Of course if you cut to the root of the matter, none of these things is guaranteed. These are assumptions we make all of the time yet in spite of

Forgiveness

To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it. Confucius

The way to use mistakes skillfully is to learn what there is to learn from the mistake and then forget the mistake ever happened. Do remember the lesson or you’ll be doomed to repeat it later. I’ve often thought we’d all be better off if we had a memory-specific erase button somewhere on our head.

Gay Marriage — USA Comes Out — Rob Portman & Supreme Court

Gay Marriage — Coming Out and Senator Rob Portman

The Supreme Court Will take on the Gay Marriage Issue!

This article was originally written as my first blog post almost three years ago. I was nervous about writing and putting out for the world to see and realized this was my next level of coming out of the closet. With Senator Portman coming out about his gay son and The Supreme Court poised to make a decision on Gay Marriage on the Federal Level I realized it was time to bring this article forward again.

You see, we all are coming out of

OH! We’re All Stressed Out!

A teaching from the Mahayana Buddhist tradition asks “If you can change a situation, then why worry? If you cannot change a situation, then why worry?” This explains the reason for much of our stress in life. We worry too much and all of that worry changes nothing yet makes us physically and mentally sick. If the solution to all of this stress is to relax then why is it so hard to relax?

All of us have probably experienced being told “don’t worry about it” when we are upset about something and I think it is