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A hallmark of what I teach, and coach, is that you create positive behavioral change by providing encouragement and showing people (or yourself) how to build on existing strengths – the positive reinforcement approach. And you don’t create behavioral change by criticizing or bullying. At best, bullying creates short-term change, but the behavior typically reverts…

Many people lose their ability to hear high-frequency sound as they age. You may have heard about the British company that was using high-frequency sounds to drive off loitering teens – the sounds apparently sound incredibly shrill. I say apparently” because “this page lets you test your “auditory age” and my aged ears couldn’t hear…

I have a niece who has Celiac, so keep an eye out for relevant info. These links are excellent: from the Boston Globe, an excellent personal narrative about living with it the Globe story mentions an organization for Celiac sufferers, Healthy Villi that looks interesting. It’s Boston-based, but has great information and good links that…

This month’s More magazine has a memoir that hit home with me, and will with many of you, too, I suspect. My So-Called Genius is the story of a woman, Laura Fraser, who…well, I’ll let her tell you: “I learned the word precocious long before other kids my age. By the time I was 5…

I recently finished Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robison, the brother of Augusten Burroughs, who wrote Running with Scissors. I couldn’t get through Running…: it was well written with lots of clever bits, but seemed like an unending and ultimately pointless freak show. Look Me in the Eye, however, is a book…

It was hard to read Paul Krugman’s New York Times oped today past the first sentence: “Nine years ago The Economist ran a big story on oil, which was then selling for $10 a barrel.” $10 a barrel?! Just 9 years ago?! Astonishing. Oil is $117 a barrel today. It was hard to get past…

Right on the heels of my blog entry on obstacles to Living a Halcyon Life, the New York Times publishes a great overview of the financial difficulties artists face . Excerpt: “Rent for a studio or a one-bedroom in the East Village, for example, has more than doubled in 10 years, said Douglas Hochlerin, a…

Gone are the halcyon days Samuel R. Delaney writes of in his memoir, The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village , when his full-time but fairly relaxed (and low-paying) job as a Strand Bookstore clerk was enough to support him and his wife, poet Marilyn Hacker, in…

From BoingBoing some famous people contributed some great six-word memoirs to an anthology: Kentucky trash heap yields unexpected flower. — John KurtzChanging mind postponed demise by decades. — Scott O’NeilDespite disorders, jafroed jewboy gets girl. — Michael EisnerDidn’t pull out. Downhill from there. — Roger DaubachThought I would have more impact. — Kevin ClarkYes, you…

There’s a sad article in today’s New York Times about the fifth anniversary of the awful nightclub fire in Rhode Island that killed 100 people and seriously wounded 200 others. The survivors – many horribly burned – continue to struggle, and many feel forgotten. This caught my attention: “Many believe the circumstances of their misfortune…