My twins’ busy schedules had become a source of worry for me. Rare were the moments when I saw them relax with a storybook, while the afternoon away with friends, or unwind by throwing hoops in the basketball net. Gone were the days when I could call them to go over old photo albums together or wa...

People generally go to meditation retreats to get clarity on the direction of their lives. In the quiet of nature and away from the chaos of daily stresses, they often find a path where they previously saw none. Some even move to the Himalayas to seek wisdom from the monks. In looking inwards, they ...

This article first appeared on Happify.com  “The heart has its reasons which reason does not know.” —Blaise Pascal You glance over your shoulder and see someone at the table across. Something inside of you instantly tells you that you should keep away. If asked to explain your reasons, you s...

I guess it is the nature of parenthood to find your children ungrateful. Or at least not as grateful as they could be, should be or used to be. This feeling really hit me hard when my twins entered their teenage years. I understood the heightened activity in their limbic brains and allowed for some...

This article first appeared in Positivepsychologynewsdaily.com   “If you can’t laugh at yourself, you’ve missed the biggest joke of all.” ~ Rick Snyder   My paternal grandmother was known for her infectious sense of humor. It is rumored that when she was young, her peels of la...

This article first appeared in Pickthebrain.com It’s 8pm. I’ve just shoved my kids in their room. They continue to fight over whose turn it is to turn off the lights. I crawl into my own bed a little later, dejected and lost and feel the pangs of guilt building up. I know their constant bickeri...

This article first appeared on PicktheBrain.com For the longest time in my life, I bemoaned the fact that fear never left my side. Everything I did, everywhere I went, everyone I met was in the company of an unwanted companion who screamed in my ears and talked louder than anyone in the room. It m...

(part 3 of A Soft Place to Call Home)    Now that you have made space for your thoughts and listened to them, gently, without judgment, and without reacting, what would the next steps be? How do you develop the perspective to see things from a wide lens so you become your own mentor who believes...

(part 2 of A Soft Place to Call Home)   “Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky Conscious breathing is my anchor” Thich Nhat Hanh   In my last article, I wrote about the importance of being compassionate with ourselves at all times. But how many of us actually do it? How...

Experiences can be painful. Such is life. When we were little, we ran to mommy and her kiss and cuddle fixed everything. Lying in her arms, there seemed not a worry in the world and the incident that had brought us running and howling was very soon a lonely cloud drifting in the far distance. Now t...

This article first appeared on SelfGrowth.com Last week was amazing. I spent 4 mesmerizing days in Amsterdam. Yes, I am talking about the beauty of the city with its history and architecture, with timeless canals and cobbled ‘straats’, with wild trams that stop for no one and even wilder bikers...

This article first appeared on SelfGrowth.com There is a general sense that children today are unhappier and more ungrateful than a generation ago. On the face of it, it seems strange. Our children have more than we could have ever imagined possessing – more gadgets, more clothes, more experience...

Fictive language is nothing new to us. Humans have been telling stories ever since we developed a voice box. In fact, the voice box may have developed partly because of the urge to express this unique ability of the human brain – that of symbolic thought. At the heart of a good story lies the emo...

Setting goals is part of our DNA as human beings. Goals move us in directions that are important to us. They make us grow. And they make us happy when we accomplish them. When we do not, goals have a wonderful way of making us feel useless and very unhappy indeed. The issue is often not the goal,...

I was at the airport a couple of days back, waiting in the bus that was to transport us from the terminal to the plane. As the passengers climbed in with their luggage, a lady barged in craning her head in search of an empty seat and on seeing one next to me, darted to it in such haste that she topp...