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

“Study the long career of Pablo Picasso and you might notice something: The subjects of his paintings don’t run off the canvas. His figures and faces aren’t cut off,” observes Jerry Saltz in his wonderful book, How to Be an Artist. “Almost every shape, body, plane, line… or form he painted fits within the four…

I was in a Polaris utility vehicle yesterday driving up a steep dirt path in Vermont. The driver was struggling a bit as this vehicle had a manual transmission. And as our vehicle made its way up the incline, it would sway side to side by 2-3 feet. Wanting to encourage our driver, I said,…

I continue to follow the Boston Celtics in their pursuit of an 18th NBA Championship. They recently went up 3-0 in the Finals, a seven game series, and things looked promising. But last night they lost in a major blow-out loss to Dallas. A few days ago I was fascinated by a comment coach Joe…

One day John Mayer asked himself, “What percentage of my potential would I like to realize? 60%? 80%? 100%?” Why did he ask that question? Due to his excessive drinking at the time, it was clear that the path he was on would negatively affect that percentage. After that conversation with himself, he decided he wanted…

It is difficult to stick with a goal. What usually gets in our way is the temptation to take a day off, find a shortcut, or even give up. C.S. Lewis offers this idea to apply when such a temptation appears. He writes, a person “who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does…

Pulitzer Prize winning poet Mary Oliver once shared that she “got saved by the beauty of the world.” The concept of being saved alludes to something pulling us in the wrong direction in our lives, a direction that “unsaves” us. For Oliver, nature redirected her attention and enabled her to notice the beauty and struggle,…