— Mandy Len Catron (who wrote one of the most-shared articles in The New York Times’ Modern Love section, To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This) is back with another must-read: To Stay in Love, Sign on the Dotted Line. I love it. Before I slather on the praise I want to make one observation: A lot of people like to say that love should be effortless and shouldn’t take work. Yeah, those people are probably single. Love, in all its manifestations, takes effort and work. And, the closer you are and the more you depend on each other the more effort you put in. Sometimes you don’t want to rub your mom’s…

In America, we have set up the perfect system for creating a lot of forceful men but not nearly enough powerful men. Powerful men, though, is what the world needs now more than ever. Force Forcefulness is born in boyhood.  You know the tune: Boys don’t cry. Get over it. Do it yourself. Don’t be a baby/pussy/faggot. Go, fight, win. And on and on. The reward for adhering to these rules might be a prideful smile from Dad, a pat on the back from our peers, or no response at all, from anyone, which, oddly, motivates us to follow the rules in the future.  The punishment for breaking the rules…

— Ever since you were a kid, you’ve been lied to. By your parents. By your teachers. By the media. Like “bad lines of code” inputted into your brain, these destructive lies now shape your reality. They make you feel immense pressure to perform. They make it to be vulnerable with others. They make you feel stressed out and anxious. Thankfully, that can be changed. Over the past 2 years, I’ve gone on a powerful journey to study with spiritual teachers around the world (shamans in Peru, healers in California, tantra masters in Bali, etc), and I’ve been able to rewrite these lines of code in my own consciousness. The results have been staggering,…

If you’re anything like me, you’ve often wished for something better than you have now. It’s human nature to have that special desire—the thing we covet the most but feel is so far out of our reach, and it’s OK to wish for it. We know we’ll never have it in our hands. If only I had just one wish! That could be someone to love and cherish us; extensive travel; a great new job; a new house or apartment; a great car or; more money through a windfall. The list of wishes can be extensive but sometimes seems so elusive. What if you had the power to see into…

‘It’s hopeless, my entire marriage is a mess, it’s utterly pointless’. Perhaps you are feeling this right now as you live day in day out in what is slowly becoming a loveless marriage. I hear this almost every week from women in all walks of life; working women, business women, stay at home mums, women living in the country, women living in busy cities – it’s across the board, women suffering in marriages that just feel ‘hopeless’. Take a step back, let’s look at the aerial picture, it’s not the entire marriage that is hopeless, it isn’t every moment that isn’t working, it’s a part that perhaps you just can’t…

In February 1840, England’s 21-year-old Queen Victoria wed Prince Albert in a silk satin dress and white lace veil. The happy couple documented their big day with a wedding portrait, as many are wont to do. However, it being the mid-19th century and all, when photography was still in infancy, the royal family instead sat for an oil painting. Fourteen years later, technology had advanced and photography was en vogue. So Victoria and Albert pulled a move to which any devoted Instagrammer can relate: They dressed up in their wedding garb to take the posed, nuptials-themed studio portrait they never had. We only hope they uttered “studio portraits or it didn’t…

Congratulations: You failed PongMoji/ShutterstockCall it what it is: You messed up! Did you crash your car into a light pole? Or was it only that you tucked your skirt into your underpants and walked through the office before realizing it? As long as you’re okay physically, dust off and get right back up. (Resilience is key.) As skiers say, if you’re not falling, you’re not getting better. Rule one of bouncing back from failure: Admit it, own it. Do a post-mortem Stanislaw-Mikulski/ShutterstockPost-mortem translates to “after death” and doctors use it to refer to the review done following a patient death to spot any errors. You’re still breathing, but you’ll have trouble…

When to start eating: Emma Kapotes/Rd.com, iStock/Naddiya If you’re seated at a table with eight or fewer guests, wait until everyone is served and for the hostess to begin eating before you dig in. At a long banquet table, it’s OK to start when several people are seated and served. These are little etiquette rules to follow when you’re a guest in someone’s house. What to keep off the table: Emma Kapotes/Rd.com, iStock/Naddiya All items not having to do with food (and decoration) should remain off the table: keys, clutch bags, sunglasses, and especially phones. When to text: Emma Kapotes/Rd.com, iStock/Naddiya “If you’re in a situation where you’d excuse yourself to go…

What is happiness? Generally, when people say they are happy, they mean they are satisfied with their life and are experiencing an overall feeling of pleasant emotions. However, in my opinion, happiness goes far beyond that surface level of happiness. I think happiness is independent of what is happening in your life. Real happiness is this deep sense of well-being, peace, and aliveness that is with you most of the time. Yet, a nine-year Dutch study into the elderly found that those who were happy, optimistic, or generally satisfied with life had around 50% less risk of dying over the period of the study that those were unhappy or pessimistic. Sadly,…