1: Ready for an interesting fact about games?
When we play them, we almost never feel hopeless.
“It’s true,” Jane McGonigal writes in her book SuperBetter: The Power of Living Gamefully.
“Psychologists have studied the top emotions during game play, and genuine anxiety and pessimism are extremely rare,” Jane notes. “Even when we’re losing or struggling, we’re vastly more likely to feel determined and optimistic than panicked or powerless.”… continue reading
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
One of my clients said, on her deathbed, “This is so beautiful…and so warm. There is light, everywhere.” Lomi, age 76
1: “Please forgive me! Please forgive me!” Ruth exclaimed.
“She was sitting up with her eyes open wide,” Diane Button writes in her powerful book What Matters Most: Lessons the Dying Teach Us About Living.
The seventy-year-old Ruth was experiencing severe distress and agitation. Diane, who serves as … continue reading
1: Eleanor Brown took out her journals and sighed.
“There were some good times,” she said, “but mostly these journals are filled with over fifty years of dreams that never came true.”
She confided this to Diane Button, her end-of-life doula.
Eleanor was seventy-two years old. She had been journaling since she was 21.
She flipped through the pages, reading entries aloud, as Diane recalls in her powerful book … continue reading
1: “Should Yahoo bring back Koogle?”
Felicia Horowitz smiled at her husband, venture capitalist Ben Horowitz.
“Huh?”
It was 2012, and Yahoo had just fired its CEO, Scott Thompson.
“Tim Koogle? How do you even know who Tim Koogle is?” he writes in his book The Hard Thing About Hard Things.
Felicia then recalled a conversation they had shared eleven years earlier, back in 2001.… continue reading
1: Floyd Barker was 88 years old. He lived alone in a rustic farmhouse he had shared with his late wife Ruth, who had passed away six years earlier.
“You couldn’t tell from his gregarious smile and inquisitive eyes,” Diane Button writes in her wonderful book What Matters Most: Lessons the Dying Teach Us About Living, but “Floyd was lonely. . .
“He was also dying from kidney failure,” … continue reading
1: “The writer David Lodge once noted that 90 percent of what we call writing is actually reading,” David Brooks writes in his book How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen.
Because we read back over our work. Continuously. To make it better.
Dealing with trauma is similar, David believes. He calls this process “excavation.”
“It’s going back and back over … continue reading
1: “To know a person well,” David Brooks writes in his book How to Know a Person, we “have to know who they were before they suffered their losses and how they remade their whole outlook after them. . .
“To know someone who has grieved, we have to know how they have processed their loss—did they emerge wiser, kinder, and stronger, or broken, stuck, and scared?”
Knowing how … continue reading
1: “Looks like pancreatic cancer,” he said matter-of-factly after receiving his test results.
“Barbara Lazear Ascher‘s husband, Bob, delivered the news in the most straightforward way possible,” David Brooks writes in his book How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen.
Bob’s doctors told him he had three months to live.
Barbara and their friends “gave him a wonderful leave-taking,” … continue reading
