And start living — Worry and happiness are mutually exclusive. When we are worried, we can’t be happy, and when we are in a joyous mood, worries vanish. …

Other than multitasking. — Time management is a skill that everyone can learn and should master because most people don’t have the luxury of focusing only on one task. We generally cannot ignore mundane activities of daily living when a deadline looms for completing important work. When we speak of time management, we may…

Simple steps. — The mind is always active and moving, from one thought to another. The three broad themes are recalling the past, projecting into the future, or imagining a result. Such continual mental activity requires energy, and the mind does not seem to tire as long as we let it wander. …

And how to make them… — The new year is an opportune time to wipe away old habits from the mind and write new ones through making resolutions. Thinking about new resolutions is easy, but implementing and sustaining them isn’t easy. A resolution signals the mind that there is a new and essential task at hand…

The inner alchemy of watchful awareness — Alchemy is happening right under our breath, in our bodies. Food and water turning into bone, muscle, and other bodily cells and tissues is nothing short of a miracle. Nature guides the body in this process of transmutation of energy. Just as nutrition from organic matter helps the body grow…

A page from a doctor’s diary Standing atop the Hoover Dam, a massive concrete edifice rising a quarter of a mile above the Colorado River, I couldn’t help marvel at human ingenuity. Below my feet, enough concrete to build a four-foot-wide sidewalk around the earth filled a narrow canyon. The…

What advertisements teach us. — “[A]dvertising is the original sin of the web,” says Ethan Zuckerman, the inventor of the pop-up ad, a form of digital advertising universally resented. Advertisers learn about our tastes and preferences by deploying invisible algorithms that stalk every click and scroll. The objective is to make us buy their product…

The vaccine meets a virus “Show me your proof?” A strange question coming from a fortune-teller. Waiting for the rain to stop, I sought shelter under an awning patched in places with plastic grocery sacks. The unseasonal rain had caught many, including myself, by surprise. It interrupted my trip to…

Do the two ever intersect? In the mind, the past and the future are not dry abstract lists of experiences that we can divide into two columns but a rich tapestry resembling a fine Persian rug. We take the past with us when we dream of the future. Conversely, thoughts…