In the fourth grade, my grandmother sewed Halloween costumes for me and my twin sister. I went as a nun and she as a jailbreaker. The costumes were appropriate then and for the next three decades. I followed every rule and she broke them. At age two, when she was still in diapers, she packed...

Musician and songwriter Willie Nelson once said, “When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.” Study after study on gratitude shows how simple exercises of appreciation build emotional resilience, improve our relationships, and promote our well-being. Gratitude researchers like Martin Seligman, PhD, director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia; Robert...

Evolutionary biologist and animal behavioral specialist Marc Bekoff, PhD, once said that “play is training for the unexpected.” And psychiatrist and play expert Stuart Brown, MD, said, “Those who play rarely become brittle in the face of stress or lose the healing capacity for humor.” I’m beginning to think that playing can even access parts of our brain that...

A reader recently asked me to give some tips for beating insomnia, so I thought I’d repost this piece. A few years ago, I experienced a terrible case of insomnia. I took the sleeping drug Lunesta, which afforded me a few wonderful nights’ sleep, until I realized it substantially increased my anxiety during the day....

In his book Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart, psychiatrist Mark Epstein tells the story of his first roommate in college, a guy named Steve, who signed up for the five hardest courses at Harvard and became obsessed with being the perfect student. He stopped playing his guitar, going out with friends, even stopped bathing....