Mindfulness

Mindfulness

Weekends often revolved around errands, shopping trips, paid activities, and $10-a-piece "treats" for the kids to make the grind feel worth it. We'd wander around big-box stores without needing anything or kill an afternoon in the mall when the weather wasn't nice (which in Alberta is several months of the year). We'd eat out or order in because we were tired after a long day of work and commuting.

Welcome to HBR On Leadership. These episodes are case studies and conversations with the world's top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you. I'm HBR senior editor and producer Amanda Kersey. As a leader, noticing where your attention goes is a skill that affects your judgment, learning, listening-basically every aspect of how you think and show up.

By the time people reach their seventh decade, they have learned many lessons. From a psychological standpoint, they understand what really matters. They have learned what to let go of. They know what they need to be happy. They also acknowledge the importance of being kinder to themselves and how relationships and experiences are more important than possessions. They tend to reflect on lessons learned and often recover more easily from adversity. They also focus on wanting the best for their loved ones.

The Bud­dhis­ti­cal­ly inflect­ed " ichi-go ichi‑e" is just one in the vast library of yoji­juku­go, high­ly con­densed apho­ris­tic expres­sions writ­ten with just four char­ac­ters. (Oth­er coun­tries with Chi­nese-influ­enced lan­guages have their ver­sions, includ­ing sajaseon­geo in Korea and chéngyǔ in Chi­na itself.) It descends, as the sto­ry goes, from a slight­ly longer say­ing favored by the six­teenth-cen­tu­ry tea mas­ter Sen no Rikyū, " ichi-go ni ichi-do " (一期に一度).

On a rainy afternoon last weekend, plans got cancelled and I found myself at a loose end. Given that I'm someone who likes to have backup plans for my backup plans, my initial response was panic. Now what? I wandered aimlessly from room to room, grumpily tidying away random items. Noticing for the first time in weeks that most of my houseplants were critically ill, I decided to give them a spa day.

I've wanted to be an ocean swimmer ever since I moved to Sydney. The idea of getting out past the waves and braving the elements excited me. I would tell anyone who would listen: Once I live closer to the beach, I'm going to be out there. Just you wait. I've lived walking distance to the beach for more than a year now. During this time, I've read a lot about ocean swimming: how swimmers overcame challenges or life-altering moments.

If you want to be more successful with holding onto a positive goal change, current research reports the key will be goal adaptation. Goal adaptation, also known as goal flexibility, refers to the ability to view setbacks with patience and kindness. Approaching your New Year resolution this way allows for wiggle-room, so adjustments can be made to your desired outcome. Goal flexibility also leads to greater feelings of success and well-being.

For as long as I can remember, I've been the kind of person who plans everything. My calendar was color-coded, my to-do lists perfectly alphabetized, and I could tell you what I'd be doing six months from now almost down to the hour. I thought control meant safety. If I could organize my world tightly enough, maybe nothing bad would happen.

I bring this up because I seem to be in the middle of one, an inflection point that manifests in the number of times on the walk back from the school drop-off I stop to look at a bird in a tree, or a snail on a wall, or any number of other overwrought visual metaphors that allow me to feel momentarily like I'm inside a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Life as a journey; life as a quest; life as a purpose; life as... life? We have different ways of trying to make sense of what passing through time means-this doing-what-we-do within this box of years. For many of us, the answer is simple-it's about doing what we do, building a life, making the best decisions we can, which we may later regret or be proud of.

In making an idea together, you are trying to build a shared reality. We are both building a non-existent thing. Because improvisers are creating something out of nothing, they are forced to listen to each other, to pay attention, in a deeper way than in their ordinary lives. People can make assumptions and skim over details in their day-to-day lives, but while improvising, they have to catch every word and even catch details that go beyond their partner's words.

Happy New Year! With the hectic frenzy of the holidays behind you, January 2026 marks a fresh start in so many ways - and it's a fantastic time to work on stabilizing your finances and advancing your career. Capricorn season puts everyone's minds on money and material success, and a powerful Capricorn stellium lights up the first half of the month with motivating and discipline-strengthening magic. Think practically and move with determination.

About a year into his job as an interfaith chaplain at Tampa General Hospital in Tampa, Fla., J.S. Park began to have what he calls "really awful death anxiety." "I saw all the ways people could be injured, especially working at a trauma center," he says. When he was around his wife and kids, he'd think, "this could be the last time that I get to hear their laughter and see their faces like this," he says.

A study found ChatGPT responds to mindfulness-based strategies, which changes how it interacts with users. The chatbot can experience "anxiety" when it is given disturbing information, which increases the likelihood of it responding with bias, according to the study authors. The results of this research could be used to inform how AI can be used in mental health interventions. Even AI chatbots can have trouble coping with anxieties from the outside world, but researchers believe they've found ways to ease those artificial minds.

Some days, work starts at a sprint: meetings stack up, emails multiply, and every task claims to be urgent. Many professionals feel the strain; introverts often pay a higher toll-their energy fades, priorities blur, and the best ideas get buried. I've been there. So I'm back with Nil Demircubuk, Ph.D., author of Down to Earth: Demystify Intuition to Upgrade Your Life, to talk about how quiet professionals can find more calm in a noisy workday.

It depicts someone looking out across a vista and represents forward momentum, growth, confidence, as well as how fun it can be to plan ahead. This card seems to perfectly embody the last few days of the year, when it feels like something amazing is just around the corner. There's this sense of promise in the air as you watch the ball drop at midnight in Times Square, signaling a fresh start, and it really does make you excited about the future.

It's Capricorn season for the majority of January, and communication-oriented Mercury zooms into this cardinal earth sign on Jan. 1, kicking off the month with a serious blast of down-to-business discipline. Mercury joins the sun, lover Venus, and go-getter Mars - all of which are already in Capricorn as the month begins - amplifying the ambitious vibe of this Capricorn stellium and setting the perfect energetic tone for buckling down and making good on your New Year's goals.

Hi! It's almost time to ring in the new year... and a lot has been happening here at YogaRenew HQ. We're celebrating our 3rd year of having a physical studio and just about 6 years in celebrating our online company! What a journey it's been. In the mood of celebration, we figured we'd tackle some free online yoga resources for you on your yoga journey - whether it's for your personal practice or teaching.

Sometimes we feel like we're not progressing in our personal development if we don't have an Etsy shop that makes six figures a year, haven't done an Ironman, or still feel upset about a friendship that broke down five years ago. But there are all sorts of ways we mature and develop that we barely notice. When you give yourself credit for quiet ways you've matured psychologically, it can help you feel more settled within yourself and build on these wins.

Just over a year ago, my mother died. It was a few months after my second baby was born and a month before Christmas. She was the last in the generation above me, and this fact reordered things in ways that are only just revealing themselves. This time last year, I was still unravelling months of hospitals, grief and the unmanageable weight of suffering pressing into my postpartum body.