a daily blog on well-being and how to feel better by Mark Barger Elliott…

Recently, I took a “Science of Happiness” course taught by Dacher Keltner, a professor of Psychology at Berkeley. He suggested in order to feel happier it can be beneficial to take what he called an “awe walk.” When I consider how and where I walk I think of walking to work, for exercise, and to…

There is scaffolding everywhere in New York City right now. Why? In 1979, a one by two foot piece of concrete fell from a building on 601 West 115th Street. In response New York passed Local Law 10, which means buildings need to have their facades checked every five years.  Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?  Except…

We love the music of the group The National.  Aaron Dessner, the guitarist, attributes part of the success of the group to how Matt Berninger, the lead singer, doesn’t sing “the implied melody.” Meaning, Berninger doesn’t sing notes that the listener anticipates. He surprises us. He takes us to musical and emotional places we don’t…

I was watching an Instagram Reel, perhaps you’ve seen it, where an earnest monk says, “For something new to come Something old must go You must empty the cup  And start from the beginning  You must empty the old tea  And pour a new one.” This observation applies to many aspects of our lives, doesn’t…

It’s often hard to imagine how prayer works or how best to pray. How to connect emotionally with what is greater than ourselves.   Recently, I came across a fascinating idea in the most unlikely of places, a best-selling apocalyptic novel by Justin Cronin called The Passage. One of the characters in the book is a…

There is happiness… then there is bliss. PBS commentator Bill Moyers once asked author Joseph Campbell, “Do you ever have the sense of… being helped by hidden hands?”  In an oft-quoted response Campbell said, “All the time. It is miraculous… if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that…