The Gist

Recently, in my part of the world, we celebrated Valentine’s Day and Family Day on the same long weekend. It is easy to get caught up and overwhelmed with all the commercialization that surrounds Valentine’s Day. The flowers, chocolates, gifts and its primary focus on romantic love. But Family Day offered an opportunity to look more broadly and examine the various types of love, warmth and connect...

It is easy to become preoccupied with all the things we need to do, whether because of obligation or choice. Our responsibilities can start to feel like burdens. And so often our modern day pursuit of personal productivity blinds us to other more valuable things - like making mistakes, learning from them, and having fun along the way. Children have an incredible ability to do all three.  Perhaps i...

It might feel like the first week of this year has already flown by!  But the rest of the year still stretches ahead of us. What will the year bring? Can we hope, plan, and work towards new goals?  Can we take any lessons from the previous year has taught us and move forward? We can choose to start each new year fresh, with curiosity about its possibilities. But uncertainty can also fill us up wit...

As we go through our lives we might wonder whether we are spending our days as we should be. How much time should go into one thing versus another? How much effort is enough? While there are no easy answers to such broad questions, it helps to start by understanding our priorities and our intentions. Armed with this understanding, we can use a practice what is called “wise effort” – knowing when a...

To everything there is a season, the saying goes.  And here in many parts of North America, we are in the midst of my favourite one - autumn.  To me, it is a season that brings together the best of the other three.  There is a hint of lingering summer heat tempered by cooler breezes.  Some days feel like spring with fresh rains and some green still left in the leaves.  And as the trees start turni...

This week marks the official start of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. My thoughts always turn to the school year as children are settling into new grades and routines in most North American cities. When the pandemic was first declared, no one could have imagined that the vast majority of the world's children would not be in school, atleast not in person.  Technology, helped millions of chil...

Last time, in Part 1 of this topic , we looked at how the remote versus in-person work debate is unfolding in different countries. Global trends aside, each of us must grapple with these questions individually. This debate rages on as we all try to navigate the ever changing waters of the workplace. Everywhere, people are wondering if remote work is here to stay or if it will be a relic of the pan...

After Covid bans started lifting a couple of years ago and some of us were going back to work in person, we shared a two-part update on global trends and individual choices we were making in returning to the office. Today, the debate continues as employees and employers grapple with the right balance, so this topic remains timely. We are revisiting it, since for many of us September is a month of...

It is very easy to get wrapped up in everything we need to do day to day. When we feel busy or overwhelmed it is natural to vent to people who lend an empathetic ear. Whether that is having too much on our plates. Or a difficult person or situation we might be dealing with. Whatever the problem, most of us find it comforting to have a calm presence to turn to - a caring spouse, a trusted colleague...

Although the Covid pandemic has thankfully passed, we continue to learn a lot about its toll on virtually every country around the world.  The pandemic came with a shared sense of helplessness and fear.  It shone a light on mental health as anxiety levels spiked. But even before Covid, anxiety was on the rise, and many people will continue to struggle with it in the future. Of course, anxiety is a...

If we were to look back in time a few centuries, we would see that so called “commoners” were going about their lives knowing they had little chance of joining the aristocratic classes. We have come a long way since then. Though socioeconomic barriers and inequalities persist, we now aspire to a world where anyone, with enough grit and talent, can become anything they set their mind to. This messa...

The idea of mindfulness, and related practices like yoga and meditation, has become more mainstream in recent years. From boardrooms to classrooms, sports fields to hospitals, the notion of working with our minds is not so foreign anymore. And yet translating these ideas into consistent action is where many of us get stuck. If we are honest, we are often better at reading articles, listening to po...

Whether we like it or not, life is full of change, both in the world around us and within our own lives. Most of us have a love hate relationship with change. We crave novelty, but too much change, too often can also feel de-stabilizing. With so much political, economic and environmental turmoil in the world right now, how can we maintain inner stability? How do we stay centered day to day, when i...

We all know the power of good stories and we humans seem wired to build our lives around them. Throughout our history, our species has relied on oral tradition to share information, pass down knowledge and teach morality through myths and legends. And every day each of us is writing our own stories. Our brains like to weave narratives out of daily events and fit them into a bigger storyline, in an...

It's safe to say that without a crystal ball, none of us know for sure how long our lives will be. Hence the expression, life is short, because in many ways it is indeed quite fleeting. Yet for some, life can also be long. Could we all embrace the secrets of people in the world who have lived the longest and healthiest lives? Maybe some of us dread living until a 100, because we imagine oursel...

With Donald Trump on the cusp of taking the presidential oath - again - there is no end of analysis about why or how this could have happened. And certainly enough finger pointing and blame to go around. Plenty has been written about broader culpability, but we are where we are, so perhaps it is better to look at why our societies willingly give personalities like Trump so much power and credence....

We are ushering in a new year, fresh with possibilities. Around the world, leaders are changing hands, for better or for worse. With change, also comes uncertainty and sometimes the revival of old wounds or long standing grudges. As U.S. President, Joe Biden, despite all his known faults, prepares to leave office, it's safe to say that he was clearly a different kind of leader than his predecessor...

Right now in the Northern Hemisphere most of us are in the midst of a change of season. The hot days of summer days, along with school holidays and vacation travel, are behind us. We are in the thick of autumn, refocused on work, school routines, or personal projects. And already, there are hints of cooler weather, with winter just around the corner. Each time the seasons change, we can take a cue...

The pandemic has forced many of us to reflect on our lifestyles - both at home and at work. It is wonderful that we are thinking more carefully about where and how we work. But a recent Economist article urges us to go even further and pay attention to what actually constitutes work. Should sitting in meetings and responding to emails be considered work? Undoubtedly both are a necessary part of mo...

The beloved Canadian literary character, Anne of Green Gables, famously said 'I'm so glad to live in a world where there are Octobers'. I for one agree with Anne. October is a wonderful month, an in-between time where the cooler fall air means wearing cozy sweaters, drinking hot cocoa and sitting by the fire watching the leaves change colour. But the best part of October, for kids and adults alike...

While decision making on a large scale has been studied extensively - as it applies to leadership, business, policy development - we often don't apply much rigor to decisions in our individual lives. Most of us don't formally learn decision making. We pick it up indirectly by watching our elders or leaders and through our own life experience. By trial and error, by making mistakes and gradually (h...

While almost all animals have unique ways of communicating, the development of complex, language-based communication sets humans apart. It allows us to express ourselves through speech and the written word. With inventions ranging from paper to computers and smartphones, the capacity and reach of human communication continues to grow. And yet it is as fraught with potential for misunderstanding an...

While going through the self check-out recently, I witnessed what is, no doubt, a common grocery store event - a spectacular, full-bodied toddler meltdown. The drama, the tears, the anger - an overreaction to something seemingly small, but very real and relevant to the child. How we respond to a distressed child has a direct impact on its behaviour. While our first instinct might be to lecture or...

It may be true that some periods of life are genuinely more intense than others. And that may be the case whether you are a single person in your twenties, or middle-aged with family responsibilities, or a retiree! At any stage of life there are times when there really is a lot going on all at once. After all, how often do we hear the phrase "I'm crazy busy"? It seems to have become...

Each summer we select audience favourites from The Gist archives to share with all of you. This year we are doing a throwback to our early days with a series on the senses and their impact on our collective well-being. Not just our five physical senses but also our awareness which allows us to develop better habits of mind, feel more compassion for others and practice grateful living. Given the de...