Absolute Citrin

Eighty-one years ago, my yet-to-be mom was getting a birthday party organized for my yet-to-be dad. He was 24 years old that day. By 2 PM, everyone was planning to still come, but the mood had become quite somber. It was the day Pearl Harbor was attacked and the US was brought into World War II. A few weeks later, my father enlisted in the Army. Dad had a penchant for words and with this extensive vocabulary and a good...

I’m working on a new website with a new logo and name (what is he changing his website name to, you may ask?) This will be the 5th major revision to my website during my 12 years in this latest iteration of an incredible career (University professor, clinical psychologist, entrepreneur, small business owner, corporate health care leader, author, and leadership and resilience expert and advisor.) In this exercise, I’m asking myself about what is most important to me in my...

(This Resilient Wednesday is a condensed version of an op-ed I wrote, and which was published by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last year) Thanksgiving is the most psychologically powerful holiday we celebrate as a nation as we recognize and express gratitude for the blessings in our lives. Since the first Thanksgiving, this time represents a way for us to express our appreciations for the many good things in our lives. Sometimes I’ve noticed, however, that my expressed gratitude can be somewhat...

As a young man, I was always wardrobe challenged. I could not put together the right colors or clothes combinations. One day, for my birthday, our teenage son Ken, who had his mother’s artistic quality, secretly went into my closet, and sewed tiny pieces of different color threads into my shirts, pants, ties (when we use to wear these), and jackets. At my party, Ken took all of us into the closet and showed off his efforts, even providing me...

My music teacher fired me last week. You may remember that I began taking voice and piano lessons earlier this year and progress has been good on the voice side and just okay on the piano side. We’ve worked on several interesting pieces of music, and I did a performance solo of You Shall Go Out with Joy, and with sang with the bass section of a choir (just two of us) in a workshop session of the opera “Orpheus...