With the Common Core Standards in place, students are being asked more and more to use critical thinking skills to analyze literary and informational text. Inference is a prime example of a critical thinking skill used in classrooms today. Students are asked to read text and analyze it by
Do we need protecting from people? Sometimes, I think the answer is definitely yes, and sometimes not. Do I need to protect myself as a therapist? I like to think about this in terms of prote…
By shifting our focus away from waiting for our next break, towards variety and compromise, our life paradigm turns more positive.
Getting out of uncomfortable conversations is easier than you think.
Without feminism there is no hope for progress.
Projects create change for people. And the success of projects often depends on how well you manage that change. Here's a primer in Change Management.
We love science at Echo. In our Trauma & Resiliency trainings (Part I & II) we get into the science about the impact of trauma, including the changes that happen to the various systems of the body. It is a pretty exhaustive list, and to try to make sense of it all, we’ve developed another of our popular infographics.
Photo by Dustin Cohen Very few people wake up and think “I need philosophy.” This is perfectly understandable. But of course, everyone has their own problems and are dealing with the difficulties of life in some way or another. The irony is this is actually what ancient philosophy was intended to ameliorate. “Vain is the word of a philosopher,” Epicurus once said, “which does not heal the suffering of man.” Centuries later, Thoreau expressed this same thought: “To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school . . . it is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.” Suffering might be a strong word to describe most our travails in love, in business, with our egos, with our urges, with our jerk of a neighbor who keeps stealing our parking space. But it turns out that this was exactly what philosophy can help with. Whatever problem you’re facing right now, someone else probably already went through it. And their advice and wisdom comes down to us through philosophy. It was jotted down by slaves and poets and emperors and politicians and soldiers and ordinary men and women to help with their own problems and with the problems of their friends, family and followers. This wisdom is there, available to us. Some of the best philosophers never wrote anything down–they just lived exemplary lives and provided an example which we can now learn from. That too, was philosophy. It was practical and it was applicable and it made life better. In a humble continuation of that tradition, I’d like this post to serve as a quick introduction to the world of practical philosophy–philosophy you can actually read and use in your own life. I won’t pass along any of that academic stuff that Schopenhauer once dismissed as “fencing in the mirror.” I want to give you the opposite of what you probably experienced in college, which despite the good intentions of your professor, you understandably resented and immediately forgot. I’m also giving you only the original texts, all of which I promise are totally readable and will change your life. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius Meditations is perhaps the only document of its kind ever made. It is the private thoughts of the world’s most powerful man giving advice to himself on how to make good on the responsibilities and obligations of his positions. Trained in Stoic philosophy, Marcus stopped almost every night to practice a series of spiritual exercises–reminders designed to make him humble, patient, empathetic, generous, and strong in the face of whatever he was dealing with. Well, now we have this book. It is imminently readable and perfectly accessible. You cannot read this book and not come away with a phrase or a line that will helpful to you next time you are in trouble. Read it, it is practical philosophy embodied. Make sure you pick up the Gregory Hays translation. The Gregory Hays translation is the most accessible edition—completely devoid of any “thou’s” and “shalls”. I loved it so much, we created a leatherbound version to withstand the test of time. Letters from a Stoic by Seneca Seneca, like Marcus, was also a powerful man in Rome. He was also a great writer and from the looks of it, a trusted friend who gave great advice to his friends. Much of that advice survives in the form of letters. Now we can read those letters and they can guide us through problems with grief, wealth, poverty, success, failure, education and so many other things. Seneca was a stoic as well, but like Marcus, he was practical and borrowed liberally from other schools. As he quipped to a friends, “I don’t care about the author if the line is good.” That is the ethos of practical philosophy–it doesn’t matter from whom or when it came from, what matters if it is helps you in your life, if only for a second. Reading Seneca will do that. (Other collections of his thoughts are great too: Penguin’s On the Shortness of Life is excellent.) The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus A Syrian slave in the first century BC, Publius Syrus is a fountain of quick, helpful wisdom that you cannot help but recall and apply to your life. “Rivers are easiest to cross at their source.” “Want a great empire? Rule over yourself.” “Divide the fire and you will sooner put it out.” “Always shun that which makes you angry.” Those are a few I remember off the top of my head. But all of them are good and worthy of re-reading in times of difficulty (or boredom or in preparation of a big event). Fragments by Heraclitus This is as ephemeral as I am going to get. While most of the other practical philosophy recommendations I’m making are bent towards hard, practical advice, Heraclitus might seem a bit poetic. But those beautiful lines are really the same direct advice and timeless, perspective-changing observations as the others. “Try in vain with empty talk / to separate the essences of things / and say how each thing truly is.” “Applicants for wisdom / do what I have done: / inquire within.” “Character is fate.” “What eyes witness / ears believe on hearsay.” “The crops are sold / for money spent on food.” Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl Viktor Frankl is sent to a concentration camp and finds some way for good to come of it, finds some way to turn it into the ultimate metaphor for life: that we have little control over our circumstances, complete control over our attitude, and an ability to make meaning out of the things which happen to us. In Frankl’s case, we are lucky that he was a brilliant psychologist and writer and managed to turn all this into one of the most important books of the 20th century. I think constantly of his line about the man who asks, “What is the meaning [...]
Advice columnist Sarah Ellis helps a reader whose ex has been reaching out to her. She wants to keep talking but is worried the situation is hurting them both.
PostSecret is one of my favorite blogs. (For those who don’t know, PostSecret is an ongoing community mail art project in which people mail their secrets anonymously on a homemade postcard, and sel…
When I first found out I was autistic, I didn’t take it well. (Spoiler alert- things have changed a lot since then.)
