In the last post in this series (over at Urban Monk), I talked about some yoga asanas, or poses, that can help us restore our focus and motivation as we work — without even getting up from our desks.  In this article, I’ll speak more generally about how yoga helps us develop what I call [...]

What?  How can boredom be a gift?  Isn’t boredom what we read blogs and mess around on social media to avoid?
Let’s think for a moment about the situations where boredom arises.  Do we usually get bored when we’re doing something empty and meaningless?  In my experience, the surprising answer is no.
Look at your own experience [...]

At some point in your life, I’ll bet you felt like you weren’t getting enough done.  You wished you could keep your attention on your work, and stop “procrastinating” by doing frivolous or unimportant things, but it just didn’t seem possible.  I used to have this problem myself, until I had a realization one day [...]

We all have behaviors we use to “take the edge off”—to temporarily rid ourselves of anxiety, depression or nagging discontent in our lives.  Alcohol and drugs are the most obvious examples, but there are many other, subtler behaviors we use to distract ourselves from our difficult feelings.
For me, until I started consciously catching myself in [...]