I attended a family reunion and memorial service for my sister-in-law, Patty, this past weekend. Her young grandchildren eulogized her by reciting some poems they selected and that had meaning to them,  their grandmother, and as it turned out, the rest of our family. Poetry has always been source for quieting,  reflecting and deepening our understanding of the world. I wrote about Amanda Gorman’s, (our first National Youth Poet Laureate)  Inaugural Speech and the power that her poetry conveyed to...

I made a trip to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store the other day to check on my laptop, which was exhibiting the Spinning Beachball of Death way too often As usual the store was packed but since I had an appointment, I was confident I would be seen in a timely manner. When I checked in, however, the maître d told me that they had just one genius at the bar, he was jammed, and I may have...

On Saturday afternoon, 19-year-old Canadian Leylah Fernandez lost the US Women Open Tennis Tournament final but won the hearts of everyone who watched the match. Fernandez lost to 18-year-old Emma Raducanu of Great Britain in the first women’s match of teenagers in 22 years. The US Tennis Open was always played close to my home when I was growing up, so I have a special affinity to enjoying those raucous NY crowds cheering on the favorites and the long shots....

I was on the tarmac at DFW Airport 20 years ago waiting for my American Airlines plane to take off for an early morning business trip. Our pilot announced that we had a mechanical problem and had to return to the terminal. None of us knew that he had been ordered back to the gate after United Airline Flight 175 hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center. He didn’t want to take a chance that there might be...

Nike announced this week that they are offering their corporate employees a week off to rest, recover and recharge. Their action is in line with other organizations such as Microsoft (added 5 wellbeing days to employee benefits) and Intel (4 weeks of sabbatical after 4 years at the company). Over the course of my career as a clinical and now organizational psychologist, I’ve watched as companies have struggled to address mental well-being. Almost everyone offers medical support such as employee...

I’ve often shared ideas about energy management, which is a much more powerful concept than is time management. Time can’t be controlled and even worse, time typically dictates to us what we can get done. After all, there are only 24 hours, 1440 minutes or 86,400 seconds in each day and that is not going to change regardless of how we try to “manage” them. Instead, we want to think about how we use our personal energy as that is...