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

“Human beings are never gonna be perfect Roy,” observes the character Higgins in the show Ted Lasso. “The best we can do is to keep asking for help, and accepting it when you can, and if you keep on doing that, you’ll always be moving towards better.” The concept of improving a skill we might…

I continue to enjoy reading the writings of Chuang Tzu, the 4th Century BCE Taoist philosopher. In this passage Tzu offers a fascinating insight on how to understand emotions of people we might be fortunate enough to lead. “The Sage does not struggle, judging the this or the that, but accepts the entirety and does…

Is there a strategy that can help us be more successful? I came across one this week implemented by the Boston Red Sox.  In baseball a lot depends on the pitcher and over the past few years as a team their pitchers have not been effective. This year, however, their ERA (earned run average) is…

I recently came across the writings of 4th century BCE Taoist writer Chuang Tzu who identifies what seems to me to be 8 essential questions we need to consider at some point in our lives. And how we answer these 8 questions, in many ways, reveals the underlying structure of why and how we make…

I’ve noticed sometimes people wear sunglasses on subways.  Which is funny, because obviously underground the sun is not shining. But it does create an aura of mystery around a person, and I have sometimes wondered, “Who is that?” So yesterday morning I tried something: I wore sunglasses on the subway. What I noticed is a…

It’s easy to think Vincent Van Gogh’s primary friend might have been Paul Gauguin. But a better case can be made it was, for a time, the artist Emile Bernard. We have 22 letters Van Gogh wrote to Bernard and they grant helpful insights into Van Gogh’s ideas and opinions about life and his art.…