Matthew Whitaker’s music brings out the best in us — I met someone special recently. I did not meet them personally because their merchandise sold out before I could buy it for them to sign. But I was introduced to their music. Let me give you the backstory. My husband loves jazz. He loves it enough to listen to it…

My body isn’t always enthusiastic about running. Some part of my body usually asks me to reconsider my exercise choice. My knees are stiff, my hips tight, and two puffs on my asthma inhaler reluctantly signal my lungs to prepare for the distance. I ran two marathons early in my…

Revisiting the law of attraction — You want what you want. Well, the good news is that what you want, wants you. This is the belief of manifestation. Podcasts, books, and videos that tell you how to manifest are plentiful. I listen to people who struggle for a living. They try gratitude quotes, daily affirmations, and…

Childhood is a precious time of being when people who love you cater to your every whim. You get to make as many mistakes as you need to learn how to become your best self. People constantly remind you how cute, intelligent, and important you are. They protect your environment…

Practice makes reaction, not perfection — The mind’s most extraordinary job is to remember without remembering. Several terms connect to this concept, such as habituation, automaticity, and imprinting. The idea is that something happens in our memory at the unconscious level based on a conscious experience to help us adapt to our environment. …

The intertwining of our professional and personal selves — Work is about productivity. We show up to increase economic value by repetitively putting widget A on widget B and going home. That’s the old assembly line version of work that most of us are no longer doing. Increasingly, productivity requires human-to-human interaction. This shift changes the way we live…

Angry or Enlightened? OK, OK, I can’t resist commenting on The Slap, only because I wrote such accolades about Will Smith’s biography, “Will,” a few months back. He expressed such vulnerability in his book. Maybe that was too much for him. He seems in pursuit of “machismo” adventure since then. National Geographic is…

Why Will Smith’s autobiography gives me more “Will” to live — Looking for motivation to walk the last two miles to get home, I searched through Audible samples on my phone. I sampled Tolle and then books on business and wealth, and kept overlooking “Will,” the recommended book on my screen for weeks. Despite how much I love Will Smith movies…

Set yourself apart and shine — We show our flesh, but not our tears. We expose our bodies but hide our fears because pain is associated with shame. We don’t seek empathy because it makes us look too weak. Exceptions are made for the rich and famous, so we live vicariously through them. I wish empathy…