Category: Relationships
-
Why Do We Rush to Make People Feel Better?
Someone starts crying. Don’t cry. Someone is worried. Everything is going to be okay. Someone is disappointed. Maybe it happened for a reason. Someone is grieving. At least you had all those wonderful years together. Someone is angry. Try not to let it bother you. Most of these things are said with love. We see…
-
Not Everything You Feel Is Yours
Something strange happens when you finally get quiet. You start noticing how noisy everyone else is. Not loud. Noisy. You walk into a room feeling perfectly fine and ten minutes later you’re tense. Someone rushes into a meeting carrying urgency and suddenly everyone is moving faster. You spend an hour with someone who is angry…
-
How Do You Know a Good Human When You Meet One?
A friend recently told me something about his brother that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. His brother is one of those people who leaves a wake behind him. Conflict. Hurt feelings. Broken relationships. Illegalities. Messes that other people somehow end up cleaning. And yet he keeps moving forward—unscathed. Things work out. Opportunities…
-
How Do You Know a Good Human When You Meet One?
A friend recently told me something about his brother that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. His brother is one of those people who leaves a wake behind him. Conflict. Hurt feelings. Broken relationships. Illegalities. Messes that other people somehow end up cleaning. And yet he keeps moving forward—unscathed. Things work out. Opportunities…
-
Are There Really Only Two Types of People?
That’s something that I have believed for many years – givers and takers. You are probably thinking right now which one you think you are. Some people seem to move through the world asking, What can I get from this? Others seem almost constitutionally wired to ask, What can I give and contribute? We tend to know which…
-
The Conversation You’re Having Before the Conversation Even Starts
Do you ever stop to wonder why we spend so much time preparing for a conversation leaving little room to be truly present in the conversation? Think about how often we do this. You’re driving to work and already having the meeting. You’re in the shower explaining yourself to your spouse. You’re walking toward someone’s…
-
Why Is It So Hard to Let Someone Be Wrong About You?
Think about that. We all do it. And we do it so often we don’t notice. We are constantly on guard to prevent it and when it happens, it consumes our attention through worry and doom-casting. And when someone does get you wrong, there is a sudden and almost irresistible urge to “clear this up.”…
-
Engineering the Human Foyer (Part 2)
The Forgotten Purpose of the Foyer for the Nervous SystemIf the foyer performs such an important function in our physical lives, then perhaps it deserves to be understood as something more than an architectural feature. Perhaps it is a design pattern. One that has quietly helped human beings navigate meaningful transitions for centuries. If that’s…
-
Engineering Human Flourishing (Part 1)
The Forgotten Purpose of the FoyerWe rarely notice foyers. They’re simply there. The entrance to a hotel. The lobby of an office building. The waiting room before a doctor’s appointment. The gathering space before a wedding. The reception area at a yoga studio. The quiet hall before entering a funeral. They exist in nearly every…
-
Identity
I’ve been thinking about the word identity lately. It’s one of those words we rarely question. We’re told to find it.Protect it.Express it.Stay true to it. But what if we’ve misunderstood what identity is for? I wonder if one of the greatest sources of suffering is that we build our identity around the last place we stopped…