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

There are days when a sunrise or the moments before the sun sets can make the world appear extraordinary beautiful. Light reflects off an oak tree, a lake, the face of someone we love.   There is a lovely phrase “in the best light.” It usually means to see something or someone from a positive perspective.  What…

I was watching an interview with the musician Sting who observed how the structure of a song has changed over the last ten years. What has disappeared is called the bridge. A song used to be made up of three parts. The chorus – which has the message of the song in it and is…

One way to feel better is to increase our repertoire of emotions. A great way to do that is to learn the names of positive emotions in other cultures. Let me give you an example, the word sisu. It’s a Finnish word that literally means “guts” or “intestines.”  For Fins the word captures the essence…

Most of us are running a perpetual conversation in our heads. We talk to ourselves. We replay or rehearse a conversation. We worry or plan. This conversation can make it hard to experience the emotions of contentment, gratitude, happiness. One way to stop talking to ourselves is to imagine our mind has a old school…

In a recent blog post Seth Godin made the observation, “they are all good days, if we choose.” Godin’s point was when we’re young we think there will be an endless number of good days in our lives – when events will go our way, the weather is beautiful, and we feel happy. Godin’s observation…

My wife and I were trying to watch one of the last episodes of Ted Lasso, a show we enjoy. We have an internet TV and the streaming network it’s on kept stalling and freezing. I restarted it maybe 20 times, which usually fixes the problem, but this time nothing worked. Frustrated, we gave up…