Doc’s Thoughts Broaden your perspective. Live a happy, healthy, meaningful life. Subscribe to Doc's Thoughts When people are first learning to meditate, I often provide a little warning: meditation is just a synonym for paying attention, while it is simple, it is not easy. This is why we meditate, to cultivate the skill of being attentive. Our minds’ tendency is to wander, and working to remain present and attentive takes effort. At the beginning of meditation, maintaining attention is...
11 days ago • 3 min read
Doc’s Thoughts Broaden your perspective. Live a happy, healthy, meaningful life. Subscribe to Doc's Thoughts We have a tendency to think of things in binary terms—on or off, yes or no, true or false, good or bad. In reality, though, most things are better thought of as existing on a spectrum—even things that we do not often think of as that way. This can be challenging because the belief structures that we use to navigate life are often framed in binary terms. All-or-nothing thinking is a...
18 days ago • 4 min read
Doc’s Thoughts Broaden your perspective. Live a happy, healthy, meaningful life. Subscribe to Doc's Thoughts Think about the people who have moved humanity forward over the past 200 years—the individuals who made a meaningful, lasting contribution to the world. Who belongs on that list? Perhaps Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, or Nelson Mandela for their leadership; Marie Curie or Albert Einstein for their scientific discoveries; Mark Twain or Gabriel García Márquez for their literary...
25 days ago • 3 min read
Doc’s Thoughts Broaden your perspective. Live a happy, healthy, meaningful life. Subscribe to Doc's Thoughts I often feel my writing is a giant rip-off of what has come before me. Most of what I write about is repackaged wisdom that’s been said before– choose your observer of human nature, and the observations throughout time and space are remarkably consistent. The Stoics spoke about resilience and emotional discipline. The Buddha taught about suffering and the impermanence of life. Aquinas...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Doc’s Thoughts Broaden your perspective. Live a happy, healthy, meaningful life. Subscribe to Doc's Thoughts In the 1960s in a small village in France, there was a group of teenage boys who would run around the town together. They would occasionally chat with the old men of the town, who would sit at a cafe and socialize. One day, one of the boys got a moped, and would race it around town. The rest of the boys were jealous. “See how lucky he is!” the boys said to the old man. “Look at how...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Doc’s Thoughts Broaden your perspective. Live a happy, healthy, meaningful life. Subscribe to Doc's Thoughts I often say that we are all instant-gratification pleasure-seeking pain-avoiding monkeys. Our nervous systems have evolved to seek pleasure and to avoid pain. In the environment in which we evolved, things that bring us pleasure– like sex, sugary/salty/fatty foods, or social standing– make us more likely to survive and pass on our genes. Similarly, things that bring us pain– like...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Doc’s Thoughts Broaden your perspective. Live a happy, healthy, meaningful life. Subscribe to Doc's Thoughts There was once a traveler who came upon a large construction site, filled with stone masons. Everywhere he looked, he saw people laboring away. The clatter of hammers on stones, heavy objects being moved, was all around. He was curious about what was being built, what great monument was being constructed. He stopped to ask questions. “What are you doing?’ He asked the first person he...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Doc’s Thoughts Broaden your perspective. Live a happy, healthy, meaningful life. Subscribe to Doc's Thoughts I recently finished a great biography of Benjamin Franklin– he was a remarkable man, with a fantastic optimism in America. He embodied (and was one of the first to articulate) many of our country’s great ideals. In America, he said, “People do not enquire of a stranger “What is he? but, What can he do?” It's a great insight, drawing a contrast to a Europe that was driven by hereditary...
2 months ago • 3 min read
Doc’s Thoughts Broaden your perspective. Live a happy, healthy, meaningful life. Subscribe to Doc's Thoughts I’ve written before about learning– about how doing anything new, for the first time, feels awkward and uncomfortable. However, with time and with practice, things that previously seemed difficult become easy, or second nature. The first time we drive a car it feels impossibly complicated, but with practice, it feels natural. This observation– that things that were difficult become...
2 months ago • 3 min read