I’m super excited to be reading from my new book Make Love Better: How to Own Your Story, Connect with Your Partner and Deepen Your Relationship Practice, at the Process Work Institute at 7pm on Thursday September 19th. I’ll share about my writing journey, talk about some of the key concepts, and read excerpts from the book.
To give you a sense of what’s really important to me, here’s a short excerpt from the end of the Introduction.
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The Message in a Smile
I haven’t changed nearly as much as I’d hoped.
A couple of years ago, I made some short videos about various relationship topics. Recently, after I announced the upcoming publication of my book Make Love Better, some of these videos have circulated on social media. It’s always been challenging for me to watch myself on video—not sure if that will ever change. But what struck me most in this video (topic: navigating relationship when your partner’s political beliefs are antithetical to your own), was not so much what I said, but how I said it.
What struck me was my smile. Which made me smile. And blush in front of myself.
Allow me to explain.
Read MorePower is a huge source of conflict in the world. Intimate relationships have great potential to play a strong part in leveling playing fields.
Romantic love relationships between men and women reproduce sexism and gender inequality. Romantic love between black and white Americans reproduces racism and brings up the trauma of slavery. Romantic love between Jews and Christians of German descent or between American and Japanese people reproduce agonies from WW2. Because of the intimate context, these cross-cultural relationships provide fertile ground for the disruption of historical wounds.
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Sometimes things have to get bad before they get better. This is true for coughs and cold sores as well as grief and conflict.
Well meaning people try to make it better for the sufferer before the awfulness has peaked. This rarely works.
Read MorePicture this: Week 3 of a five-week Intensive Course. About forty people—from different (and warring) countries, cultures, religions, races, genders and socio-economic backgrounds—are in attendance. The students have different levels of education, health, physical abilities, English language capacity and range in age from twenties to seventies.
Read More“In visual perception a color is almost never seen as it really is, as it physically is. This fact makes color the most relative medium in art.” Josef Albers
Many people are confused about color. I can understand why. Color is all about relationship. About perception. And that can get complicated.
Read MoreSomeone I know has been sober for nearly fifteen years. When he realized scotch had become a destination, the reason to get through the day, the carrot on the stick, he found his self-respect and gave it up. He swears that once he hits his eighties, he’ll start to booze again. After all, why would it matter then? That’s what he thinks today, in middle age.
My mother just turned eighty. She admits to being confused by the mandate to live each day of her life as if it were her last. If today were the last, she told me, I would eat a giant piece of chocolate cake. And another. And if I did that every day, I’d blow up like a house. And my last day would be soon! Now why would I want to do that?
Read MoreYour eyes will never be normal. Dr Mark Terry, Surgeon, Devers Eye Institute, (explaining why post-surgery I still can’t see well enough to read or drive or cross the road safely without corrective lenses).
I never thought to call it naked before. It was just how I saw. Or, to be more precise, how I didn’t see, until I put my contacts in. I didn’t spend a lot of time there.
Recently, two high power intraocular lenses have been surgically implanted through small corneal incisions. (And from the twilight zone of anesthesia, I could see the scalpel). Although these lenses correct a good portion of my myopia, they aren’t quite bionic enough to take me all the way to what’s considered normal sight. The technology isn’t there yet. The new lenses bring my naked vision to about 20-200—the official number for legal blindness.
Read MoreChange management: passé. Conflict resolution: no longer sexy at all. Innovation: it’s the thing—the elixir for today.
There are countless ways to think about innovation. Wait… Isn’t every new thought about innovation an innovation? Well, no. Not unless that creative thought results in the implementation of something new. Innovation involves putting ones creative ideas to work.
Why the rage? Why are so many smart people—artists, designers, educators, engineers and CEOs—all so concerned about whether or not they are doing it?
Read MoreSomeone I once loved killed himself. On the 5th anniversary of our break-up, on the dark days between Christmas and the New Year, he shot himself in the head in a motel room a few miles from where I currently live with my partner and step-kids.
Read MoreAnything worthwhile, any project worth doing has an outcome that can’t be predicted.
My brain doesn’t like that. And if you’re human, neither does yours. We humans are pre-wired to feel vulnerable around risk and change. When we move towards something new or unpredictable, a little voice in our head warns us off.
Be safe. Stay with what’s known.
Read MoreThe ability to design a really cool thing has a basic skill in common with the capacity to have a really good relationship. Both pursuits demand that we empathize with the end user.
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