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...

Every time my students would take the VIA survey on Character Strengths and ‘Love’ would show up in their top 5, there was a mix of embarrassment and denial on their faces – almost as though a dirty little secret of their inner lives had just been revealed and they needed to distance themselve...

Part 2 of 2 – see part 1 here: Why Stress Is Actually Good For Us In Part 1, I wrote about the negative impact of stress on our health ONLY if we believe stress to be harmful for us. However, what is also becoming evident is that stress makes us more social, and for a species whose success lies i...

Part 1 of 2 – see part 2 here: Reaching Out and Reaching In Me and stress go back a long way. I was only 9 when my English teacher labelled me “the little worrier”. As I grew older “just relax” and “don’t you know stress is bad for you” became the way others most often related to me...

Isn’t it a joy to watch a baby learn to walk? The infectious look of glee on their faces? The beaming pride with which they look around and seek acknowledgement? The total oblivion to the ‘failure’ of numerous falls and the endearing scramble back to our lap of safety when the going gets reall...

It was a haunting interview - Clive Wearing, the brilliant musician who lost his memory, spoke of what life was like without any recall of life events: “One night 20 years long – with no dreams, that’s what its been like, just like death. No difference in day and night, no thoughts at all. An...