Recently, I was introduced to Dr. Robert Waldinger. He runs the Harvard Study for Adult Development, a seminal eighty-year longitudinal study of humans that tells us a lot about what creates life satisfaction. His TED talk has been viewed more than 40 million times, and one of the key lessons is relevant to those of us in the Modern Elder community.

I have spent my entire life feeling like an impostor. As a kid, we moved around a few times from country to country, culture to culture and I became adept at fitting in wherever I was.

Happy New Year! Here’s to a flourishing year of transformation.

Recently I had the opportunity to spend a week in Hawaii on our major family trip. While staying in a hotel on Waikiki Beach, we witnessed an explosive fire from one block away. It was abrupt and quick, with thick, velvety black smoke covering the sky and falling onto the aqua blue water. (You can see my tweet with video here.)

“The male midlife crisis is the stuff of clichés and Hollywood tropes: red sports cars, leather pants, and perky paramours. The female version, however, is talked about much less. Many of its symptoms—like sleeplessness, sadness, and anxiety—are chalked up to perimenopause. While that physiological transition, with all its hormonal fluctuations, can certainly bring emotional upheaval, a woman’s midlife crisis is often more complex, with cultural forces and psychological triggers at play.” Dina Cheney, Health Magazine

A couple months ago, I wrote a blog post highlighting a new column in the New York Times called "It’s Never Too Late" and I encouraged our Wisdom Well readers to share some of their stories about how you made substantive changes in the second half of your adult life. I also welcomed you to send me your stories.

The night is endless this time of the year, right? It's time for curling up on the couch and letting Hollywood have her way with us. Unfortunately, there can often be a paradox of choice given all the ways we digest film content at home these days: Netflix, Hulu, ApplePlus, HBO Max.

As I stepped into the Mission Church at Santa Clara University a few weeks ago to honor the life of a popular, long-time campus leader who passed away recently, I found myself swept up in a vivid memory of this splendid Bay Area college campus, the oldest in California.

Merry Christmas! My first weeks of college - long before my other Stanford freshmen classmates were to join me on “The Farm” - were spent in “hell weeks.” It was five or six hours per day in the pool for weeks trying to keep up as the slowest freshman on the national champion college water polo team.

I'll admit it. I've been a self-improvement junkie much of my life. In high school and college, I would sit for hours in the library reading books like "How to Win Friends and Influence People," "Think and Grow Rich," and, heaven forbid, "Atlas Shrugged."