1: “Our conversations started out funny and just got funnier,” Diane Button writes in her wonderful book What Matters Most: Lessons the Dying Teach Us About Living.

Diane and Franck Battelli, both end-of-life doulas, were meeting with Greg, 53, who was dying from ALS.

Before proceeding, Greg wanted to make sure it would be a good fit.

“He let us know in a very serious tone of voice that … continue reading

1: Diane Button had been living in Nashville for only a year when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

“Whether it was divine providence or sheer luck, during a time when our family truly needed help,” Diane writes in her book What Matters Most: Lessons the Dying Teach Us About Living, “people showed up from almost everywhere.”

One afternoon, while recovering from surgery and starting chemotherapy, Diane heard … continue reading

This week and next we are exploring Sahil Bloom’s concept of “Social Wealth” as outlined in his book The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life.

Today we turn to a list of “Social Wealth Hacks I Wish I Knew at Twenty-Two” which Sahil put together with Arthur C. Brooks, social scientist, Harvard Business School professor, and number one New York Times bestselling … continue reading

1: Apple founder Steve Jobs once stated: “Almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

“Remembering that we are going to die,” Steve said, “is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking we have something to lose. We are already naked.”

So, let’s imagine our funeral.

“Close … continue reading

1: The Harvard Study of Adult Development is the longest in-depth longitudinal study of human life ever done.  The study has followed the lives of 724 individuals beginning when they were teenagers, and now spans over three generations and includes an additional 1,300 of their descendants.

“For eighty-four years (and counting), the Harvard Study has tracked the same individuals, asking thousands of questions and taking hundreds of measurements to find … continue reading

1: “If you had to make one life choice, right now, to set yourself on the path to future health and happiness, what would it be?” Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz ask in The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness.

Would we start saving more money?  Change our occupation?  Decide to travel more?  

Back in 2007, a group of millennials were surveyed regarding their … continue reading

1: Peter Marks took his life a few weeks before his younger son’s college graduation.

“If I’m ever in a similar situation again,” his friend David Brooks writes in How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, “I’ll understand that you don’t have to try to coax somebody out of depression. 

“It’s enough to show that you have some understanding of what … continue reading

1: “My most searing encounter with depression came when the illness hit my oldest friend, Peter Marks,” David Brooks writes in his book How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen.

“Severe depression was revealed to me as an unimagined abyss,” David writes. “I learned that those of us lucky enough never to have experienced serious depression cannot understand what it is … continue reading