Summer. A blistering heat haze rises from the tarmac outside a man’s house. Rather than sip margaritas with ice in his shaded yard, though, my distant neighbor stands on the curb and waits. He’s ready to accost people near his fence.

Woe betide the individual who stops to make a phone call or a stray dog who dares cock a leg on the street side of the boundary. No one within ten feet is safe.

For a boundary issue sufferer (BIS, a descriptive phrase I coined), this behavior isn’t rare. I’ve seen it on another occasion.

“What’s up Maria?” My…

Many people focus on their history rather than their current existence. The past looms so large it eclipses their wellbeing, and it’s hard for them to move on. They are stuck in a time when someone hurt them or their circumstances were dire. Perhaps you feel the same, and your past is an angry shadow.

Believing other people or old difficulties control your wellbeing dis-empowers you. It stops you from recognizing you can progress and improve your life.

Guilt, shame, and blame immobilize. If you think your parents, culture, society, or siblings — anyone — ruined your life, you’ve reached…

I used to believe some folks were born lucky, and others didn’t have good fortune in their forecasts. Later, though, I noted the sun shines more brightly on people who create the right conditions for luck to rise.

You can work hard in a dead-end job, for example, yet your toil doesn’t guarantee your professional wellbeing and security. If you knuckle down in a better job, your forecast will improve. Putting yourself in the right position and doing your best plants the odds of succeeding in your favor.

As I ponder other things that make certain people luckier than others…

Prolonged stress grows into heavy emotional baggage. We are built to manage immediate threats to our survival, but not chronic pressure that weakens our resolve.

To survive in our current world, we carry problems that are forever on our heels. Our modern burdens are low self-esteem and fear.

Often, the biggest threat to wellbeing is stress. When our ancestors tried to survive tooth-and-claw threats to existence the experience ended fast. Now, we meet weighty problems we can’t outrun and it affects our health.

Although danger sources have changed, our response to stress is the same, and juggling troubles can make…

I sometimes ponder why many of us rarely use our knowledge to help us reach our potential. I say, us because my observation begins with me. Occasionally, I note I’ve useful wisdom in my knowledge-bank left untapped. I spent ages cramming it into my inner library. Yet, it’s like an unread novel gathering dust. What gives?

What stops people from making the most of their know-how?

What if we use our expertise to enhance our health instead of meaning to do it, but not getting around to it?

What will happen if we practice deep listening to develop our relationships and increase compassion and forgiveness?

Curiosity makes me speculate what…

If you want peace, you might seek it in the countryside, by the ocean, or on your couch as you listen to music. You might even find it there, but it doesn’t come from anywhere outside of you. It lives in one place, that’s, perhaps, not where you imagine.

You forge your personal state of tranquility.

While some places and situations help you relax and enjoy calmness, they just trigger something only you can create. You might forge a link between a beautiful landscape and peacefulness. You generate the emotion you experience, though.

Only you can create the calm and…

During the Covid-19 pandemic I’ve noticed a rise in how easily people succumb to irrational thinking. Individuals I consider sane and reasonable turned to illogical ideas or did their best to force their beliefs on others. It is logical, of course, to want people to see your point of view when you consider your life is at stake. But it’s important to recognize times when you’re gripped by irrationality: Especially now as the pandemic lockdown eases.

Living with the coronavirus in our midst has been an unusual experience for most of us. Spreadable diseases have arisen throughout history, but many…

It seems a million years ago, but my crush was as large as life. I was 12: He was 14, and lucky for me, the feeling was mutual. Each day I scoured the school playground, wide hallways where footsteps echoed, and the streets of my hometown for just a glimpse of the boy.

It’s natural to endure a crush in your youth, and not too unusual to experience one if you’re single at any age. But there’s a line between healthy interest, with a touch of preoccupation, and unhealthy fixation.

If you can’t stop thinking about someone, doubtless, your passion…