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

We were watching the Hulu show The Bear last night and one of the characters was shopping at a Farmer’s Market and said to a man selling vegetables, “things that grow together go together.” She was sharing the observation that if these vegetables grew together in the same part of the farm then likely they…

In this season of political division I was thinking recently about the atom. It’s remarkable to consider how one of the smallest things in the universe also unifies us. Because the atom found in a rose in Paris, a tank in Ukraine, and in your best friend’s curly hair, is the same. It sounds like a…

I was on a film shoot yesterday and it occurred to me how much easier it is to navigate a project if we cultivate an attitude that recognizes a successful outcome might require a sequence of small yeses. As we begin our project, for example, we likely need assistance (a “yes”) from the first person…

Richard Feynman, one of the most significant physicists of the 20th century, made this helpful point, “The first principle,” he said, “is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.” Before we arrive at a conclusion, or in Feynman’s case publish scientific findings, he advised we consider all…

“Who would miss it if it were gone?” asks author Seth Godin. Godin writes about business and marketing and in this case is pointing to a restaurant, for example, or a company, a product, and making the point we only know how successful we are by the number of people that would miss “it” if…

I got on the elevator last night after work. The buttons are hard to read as they are not illuminated. I was distracted and instead of pushing the first floor button, I pushed the button beneath that one, and suddenly instead of going down, we went up and quickly. Our office building has maybe 20…