I’ve heard it said that life has two speeds: too fast and too slow. The harried workaholic and the perpetual slacker are both familiar archetypes in our culture.What factors differentiate the tortoises and the hares among us? How can we become more aware of these forces that drive us in order to get get more control of our own internal throttle?

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” This innocent question is maddeningly hard to answer for many young people. Part of the difficulty is born of the surreal environment we build for our children and the distance we put between them and the adult world.

Our modern culture’s attachment to excess is easy to see in the material realm: bigger homes, bigger cars, and bigger paychecks. The simplicity movement has done well pointing out the downsides of the “bigger is better” aesthetic. However, a predisposition to excess can also infest our minds. Sometimes the smartest thing to do is to think less.

Perhaps the “American Dream” doesn’t really live up to its promise. It offers the hope of success for anyone who plays the game right, but perhaps it’s just not true. I think this is what drives the anger surrounding the Occupy Wall Street protests. If you want to understand these current events better, try playing The Game of Life!

When is a virtue not a virtue? When persistence and “staying the course” keeps you on the wrong course.

Why do some therapists use a couch and some don’t? What’s the purpose of the couch? And how can I choose the best therapist and method of psychotherapy for me?

I recently wrote about how our emotions can become tangled up with possessions and artifacts that represent past experiences and relationships; how our homes gradually fill up with ‘stuff’ — literal and metaphorical — that blocks us from moving on. But how do we actually go about clearing the clutter?