The Gist

If you're a Beatles fan like me, you might remember the song with the lyrics 'all the lonely people, where do they all come from, where do they all belong?' ( titled Elanor Rigby ). It has the simple yet beautiful musical arrangement that the band is famous for. But more than that it gets to the heart of a ubiquitous human emotion - loneliness. Since virtually everyone experiences it,...

Everyday many of us deal with reams of emails, texts, documents and media that can overwhelm our brains.  So keeping track of all this content has become an entire field in and of itself.  This is certainly true for organizations large and small .  But it's also a real challenge on a personal level.  How can we manage and decipher what information is useful?  How do we sep...

Often, in the early morning hours, when my house and the world around me are quiet, I notice how full my mind is with different voices.  Not literally, but in the sense that many ideas and opinions from conversations, reading and other media are floating around through my mind.  Perhaps you notice this too if you are an early riser, or in the silence at night or simply during that rare q...

With all the recent layoff announcements in the media - especially from major companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft - it's a good time to think about how much our work defines us.  After all, the majority of us have to take part in this thing called work.  It is our livelihood, allowing us to provide for ourselves and our loved ones.  So it's natural that what we do starts to...

Well it's February again and with Valentine's Day becoming a worldwide festival, many people are thinking of romantic relationships.  Maybe you took the day to celebrate with someone special or you cringed at its commercial nature and moved on.  Either way, its a good day to pause and think about all the relationships in our lives, romantic or otherwise.  Being social creatures, rel...

There was a time in human history when we had very little control over our lives and limited information on which to base decisions.  But today, it is almost unthinkable that the Internet didn't exist until just a few decades ago.  How did we survive without browsers and apps that, with a few keystrokes, deliver a deluge of content before us.  Yet there comes a point when this infor...

As our daily lives unfold, it's easy to believe that whatever is in front of us might stay that way forever.  But all the while, the reality of impermanence is with us, a constant companion, whether we choose to see it or not.  So how can we stay rooted in the present without forgetting that it is fleeting?  And how can we be less afraid to face our unknown futures?  See full t...

It's still early in the year and with many months stretched out ahead of us, it's exciting to imagine what lies ahead.  Yet such excitement is often dampened by a fear of failure.  What if the year comes and goes without a sense of accomplishment?  Will we just just fall back into old habits we've been trying so hard to break. What if we keep making the same mistakes we've made befo...

As we kick off a brand new year, it's useful to reflect on what we've learned from the last one.  What did we do well?  What could we do better?  A common reflection I hear from friends and family is the wish to simplify their lives.  So many of us over complicate things and get in our own way.  I know I do, so I am trying to apply a 'less is more' philosophy in my own lif...

I don't know about you, but I like resolutions. The kind that we set at the start of the year, or on a birthday, or as we usher in a new season. The ones that signal new beginnings. But I also like the other kind of resolutions, which are the endings of things. When something comes full circle or a difficult situation finally gets resolved and I can feel relieved. Let's tackle both kinds of resolu...

There is someting about a fresh start that is so appealing isn't there?  Even as a child I remember that feeling of a new school year, fresh with new clothes, new books, sharpened pencils, unused erasers.  As an adult this same sense of eager anticipation sprung up in university, when I started new jobs or moved to new places.  Of course the start of a brand new calendar year is no...

Due to the pandemic, it may have been a while since any of us have been on a plane.  But we can likely remember times when we were excited about traveling somewhere, only to have our plane enter a holding pattern.  Flying circles over the airport, waiting for clearance to land.  Or stuck on the tarmac awaiting a gate. Sometimes, life can feel this way.  During Covid we have all...

Even with smart devices and artificial intelligence, our brains can do things that no machine can yet match.  From processing emotions to learning language to creative problem solving, we haven’t figured out how to replicate what the mind does. Yet our beautiful minds can also lead us astray into negativity, violence or self-sabotaging behaviour.  At a minimum, most of us can relate to t...

We all know in theory that life is full of impermanence.  And yet when we face changes in our own lives, big and small, we seem to forget this fundamental truth.  We resist change and feel safer when we stick with all that is familiar, sometimes even when a situation is not good for us. So why do we fight change and what are we losing by clinging so tightly to our comfort zones? How can...

It is easy to get embroiled in the minutia of daily life.  Whatever is happening at the moment can seem all consuming, all important.  And we can quickly forget that this moment is but one in a full, and hopefully long, lifetime.  For times like this it can help to hang on to sayings or images as signposts that point to a more healthy perspective. See the full transcript here.

We're looking at a how luck shapes our lives.  Are our successes or failures determined by our own abilities and hard work, or are they just a matter of luck? See transcript here

Today we are exploring humility, a word that is easy to throw around but hard to genuinely embody. In our modern world, where self-promotion is deemed necessary for success, being humble can even be seen as negative. And we are all guilty, at times, of proclaiming humility though our words and actions suggest otherwise. But can we cultivate true humility by looking at it differently? The Oxford En...

We write a lot about individual growth and self-inquiry. But it doesn't hurt to do some collective soul searching, whether as a family, a school or an organization. Today we look in particular at business. After all, the notion that a company exists to do more than generate a return for its shareholders is not new. But by and large it has failed to take root in any significant way. Nonetheless, ma...

If you are like most people, you're probably having a very busy day. Modern life comes with a laundry list of daily tasks and deadlines across many areas of our lives. Work, family, events, household responsibilities and other activities. This, combined with all the information coming at us through our devices, makes for a pretty noisy existence. It also leads to an outsized emphasis on external t...

Welcome to The Gist. Today we're talking about cheerfulness. The writer and painter, Herm Albright once quipped that ‘A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.’ Sometimes it seems like there are people who are just always cheerful and have a positive attitude. The rest of us might look enviously at them and wonder if they were...

Welcome to The Gist. 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...

Welcome to The Gist. 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...

Welcome to the GIST. Most of us would agree with the idea that focus is a good thing. But is it? What if we spend too much of our time focusing on the wrong things. This is where cultivating gratitude can help us direct our attention towards the right things. We talk a lot about gratitude and there is no better time than the Thanksgiving holiday to be reminded about all the benefits of grateful li...

Welcome to the Gist. Right now in the Northern Hemisphere most of us are in the midst of a change of season. The hot days of summer are behind us, and with it the busyness of family gatherings, school holidays, and vacation travel. We are ushering in autumn, which comes with a sense of refocusing - on work, school routines, or personal projects and goals. Each time the seasons change, we can take...

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...