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

James Wood writes wonderful essays and in his book Serious Noticing spends time on the author Herman Melville of Moby Dick fame and reflects on how the character Ishmael uses the phrase, “Ifs eternally.” The idea Melville was exploring through his character was that we can look back at our life at any point and…

I was talking with my son and in the midst of our conversation he said that he needed to “think now” in regards to a problem scheduling a sequence of events over the weekend. I thought that was an interesting phrase. There are times when we all need to pause and “think now.” To not…

When wonderful things happen in our lives sometimes they can feel miraculous. Events or situations can occur that seem to fall just on the other side of what appears sequential or plausible. To which poet Mary Oliver offers this wonderful advise, she says “Accept the Miracle.” Meaning, don’t over analyze it, discount it, or forget…

You may have heard of our susceptibility to being influenced by a placebo. Meaning, if I tell you a pill will make you feel better, but it is really only a sugar pull, more than likely it will still work. Researchers discovered the reason we can be fooled by a disguised sugar pill (that has…

“I don’t want a kid to carry any baggage forward. Each play is new,” writes former Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski in one of my favorite books on leadership, Leading with the Heart. Coach Krzyzewski goes onto explain how he wanted his players to believe that if they missed four shots in a row the…

When my son was in elementary school I was fortunate to coach his basketball team. For our team’s identity I came up with the idea of 40-100 and created a logo and had it printed on t-shirts. You’ll find a photo of it at on-emotions.com. The idea and the challenge was as a team we…