Author Archives: rccjaved

Why We Need Mindful Leaders Most leadership books and training programs focus on how leaders can achieve more—do more, better, faster, with spectacular results. We’ve become obsessed with continuous improvement at increasing speed, with resulting rising stress levels to leaders and their followers and deteriorating relationships.  Mindfulness as both a leadership practice and workplace culture holds the promise to bring back balance and[…]

Do Symptoms of Personality Disorders Change Over Time? Personality disorders involve long-term, problematic behaviors that typically are first exhibited during adolescence and cause marked distress and impairment.  The very definition of personality disorders as “chronic maladaptive patterns of behavior” implies that symptoms are stable over time; however, recent studies indicate that symptoms improve and may even completely remit[…]

A Surprising Treatment For Chronic Pain I have a small cohort of patients who suffer chronic pain so intense and unremitting it prevents them from living normally. They often don’t work, shop, go to restaurants or movies, leave their homes or sometimes even their beds except to visit doctors, or have meaningful relationships outside their immediate family,[…]

Diagnosing Addiction Can Be Tricky This week millions of families will gather together to celebrate a holiday, Easter or Passover. At some of these gatherings, an uncle or cousin will talk too loud, interrupt too much or turn an innocent conversation about the state of the local baseball team into an ugly argument. He or she has[…]

The Mother’s Eyes Are The Refuge Where Children Confirm Their Existence. You learn the world from your mother’s face. The mother’s eyes, especially, are a child’s refuge, the mirror where children confirm their existence. From the doting reflection of its mother’s eyes, a baby draws its earliest, wordless lessons about connection, care, and love, and about[…]

How to Discern Which Attractions Lead to Pain & Which Can Lead to Real Love If I could only share one insight with my single readers, it would be this: Learn to distinguish between your “attractions of deprivation” and your “attractions of inspiration.” Then, only follow your attractions of inspiration. I believe that’s the wisest path to[…]

The Materialistic Search For Happiness is Laden With Paradox Sadly, in our capitalistic culture today, the two aspirations denoted in the above title–to me, sharply contrasting–are frequently confused. They can be (and have been) viewed as virtually identical. And if in fact happiness is conceived in monetary terms, then the more money gained, the more material objects acquired, the[…]

Intelligent People Are More Likely to Do Stupid Things Not only are more intelligent individuals more likely to consume more alcohol more frequently, but they are also more likely to engage in binge drinking and to get drunk. In an earlier post, I show that consistent with the prediction of the Hypothesis, more intelligent individuals consume larger quantities of alcohol[…]

Rich ہr Poor, Adverse Childhood Experiences Predict Future Problems Research on what is called “adverse childhood experiences” (ACEs) is showing that there is a shortlist of five things that happen to children when they are with families that are very likely to cause them mental and physical health problems later in life. In fact, the relationship between these factors[…]

Creativity Can Thrive Without Alcohol & Drugs My entire life I grew up around creative people. Indeed, my godfather was John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie and my godmother was the wife of legendary saxophone player Stan Getz. I was so close to both of these men since I was practically born and when they died I[…]