This past weekend I performed with our improvisational theater group, Wing and A Prayer Players at an art exhibit focused on “Breaking the Stigma of Mental Health.” We had an amazing audience who participated with us responding with their their ideas, thoughts and feelings as we danced, sang, and told stories related to the art work in the gallery. At the end of the program, people used words like “enlightened,” “refreshed” and “alive” to describe how they were feeling after...

In The Resilience Advantage, we discuss the importance of the positivity and negativity bias to building a strong resilient system. Since survival is life’s prime imperative (think of Maslow’s Hierarchy) the negativity bias, and its protective mechanism that makes sure we are safe, typically rules much of our day. We are always watchful to make certain that we don’t falter to the downside by making a seemingly terrible mistake. While the negativity bias was probably important to make sure Wooly...

We’ve focused much of our discussions in the blog about personal or business resilience. In The Resilience Advantage which will be coming out in mid-March, I make a strong argument about bringing insights from community resilience models into our workplace and homes. In my local community, Pittsburgh, we are seeing a renaissance of growth. After having endured the closing of the steel mines and the diaspora of much of the workforce, the City has come back with a vengeance Today,...

Most people are familiar with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) but few are familiar with a condition that I call Attention Intensity Disorder. AID is what happens when you are so focused on an activity that the rest of the world disappears and you become a bit obsessed with completing that task. As someone who is challenged with it’s opposite, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD,) it wasn’t hard for me to notice the difference between people with AID and myself. I’d work...

An article in last week’s Wall Street Journal caught my attention with its headline about making my digital life more secure. I had just gotten an email from a friend telling me she got a hacked email from one of my social media accounts and when I went in to change my password, I realized I’d forgotten it. All this effort was taking time away from more valuable activities and although I’ve shied away from the idea of keeping all...

How does the happiest man in the world earn that moniker? Over a 12-year period cellular biologist turn Buddhist Monk, Matthieu Ricard participated in a research study at the University of Wisconsin where his brain waves were monitored while he was meditating. Researcher Richard Davidson had a group of meditators, including Ricard and a group of non-meditators focus on the ideas of compassion. After comparing their results, Ricard’s brain’s activity was “off the happiness chart.” At a recent meeting at...