Be sane by being present instead — While holidaying in Tasmania, I was a barmaid for a few minutes. Being the perfect tourist, I visited the MONA (Museum of Old and New Art), which the Tasmania Travel Guide describes as Australia’s largest private museum and one of the most controversial private collections of modern art and antiquities…

A nerve-racking tale about letting go of things that no longer serve your purpose — Do you feel trapped by your beliefs? Have you changed inside, but you still try to make your old beliefs fit? You almost let them go and then you make a panicked grab for them again because they make you feel safe. If you let them go, you fear you’ll…

Say “Thank you” to people and things — One of the first things we teach children to say is, “Thank you”. Then we forget to say it ourselves. Before we go overseas we learn to say “Thank you” in several languages. Merci, danke, gracias, obrigado, grazie. We practice in the mirror while combing our hair, trying to get…

The choice is yours — I am carrying around inside my head a very dangerous weapon. I think I’m in control of it, but it’s in control of me. This weapon knows what it wants and what it doesn’t want. It seeks out and destroys anything it disagrees with. It’s automatic, easily activated, and does…

A wise old woman in the desert who had no religious beliefs — When I was eleven years old, Grandma came on a journey with us across the Australian desert. To pay her way she made a fruit cake, stowed it in her bag, and brought it out at key moments during the trip. Grandma scared me a little. She was my mother’s…

Openness is the best option — Our desire for certainty makes us unhappy. In an article in The New Yorker, Maria Konnikova discussed our need for what social psychologist Arie Kruglanski, called “cognitive closure”. This is our need for certainty. …

You just don’t realise it — What is the nicest word in the English language? I agree with Laura Ingalls Wilder when she wrote: Home is the nicest word there is. Everyone who speaks English loves the word home. Home has a mellow vibration to it with the long ‘o’ sound in the middle and the…

But you can’t run away from yourself — Once I had a dream which was so disturbing that when I woke up I could hardly stand being myself. I wanted to be anyone else but me. I wanted to run away from myself. I didn’t want to live with myself anymore. What brought on this feeling? I dreamed…

Live in the present moment — Life sometimes leads us to a fork in the road, a choice. Which road shall we take? When this happens, some of us recall that poem by Robert Frost — ‘The Road Not Taken’ — which ends with the memorable lines: I took the one less traveled by, And that has…