Category: Personal Development

  • The body language of love and attraction

    Last week I read a book I’d been meaning to read for a long time — Love Signals: A Practical Field Guide to the Body Language of Courtship by David Givens, Ph.D. It turned out to be even better than expected. In fact, I made 163 highlights and took 19 pages of notes!

    Now we’ve all heard the term body language and are aware of how it works to some extent. But the word language is not even a metaphor here. Body language is literally a language, and if you’re not familiar with the vocabulary and syntax, you might miss something life-alteringly important.

    Luckily, language operates at an unconscious level, so you’ve probably been doing a good job of understanding body language all along. At the same time, a little bit of extra training can put you way ahead of the competition – and enrich the experience of peoplewatching next time you’re in a public place.

    Here are some fascinating snippets from the book:

    — You have a whole center in the temporal lobes of your brain dedicated to responding to (more…)

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  • Dr Ali’s Book Club: “A Path With Heart” by Jack Kornfield

    Soon after moving to San Francisco, I became aware of Spirit Rock, the teaching and insight meditation center just a few miles up the road founded by Jack Kornfield some 30 years ago. Friends spoke highly of it, and your first session was free! With nothing to lose, I made the pleasant pilgrimage to Marin County and sat in on one of Jack’s classes.

    Jack turned out to be one of the best teachers I’ve ever had. After years of meditation and study in Asia, not only does he know his stuff very well, but he’s also quite funny. Like a great college professor’s lectures, his discourses range widely and incorporate numerous allusions, stories, quotes, and quips. He had us laughing at a regular clip of once every 5 minutes or so. Don’t you wish more teachers did that?

    I later found out that Jack is also a practicing PhD in psychology. It seemed as if his (more…)

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  • The Jekyll/Hyde Power of Maybe, The 6-month Specialist & the Myth of Attracting Unavailable Men

    Big thanks to Meaghan, Colleen C, Amie and Monica (“BEST. BOOK. EVER.” – really?! I think I’m in love) for posting reviews to Amazon in the last week. The amount of compliments in there is enough to make me blush, and you know what? I’m learning how to be cool with it. Blushing is good for the skin. Here’s what Meaghan said:

    “I found so much joy from this book! It is labeled as a dating book, however I found that embedded in the info about dating were so many valuable life lessons that you can apply to everything you are pursuing in your life. I truly think every woman should have a copy. I have read it once and have started reading it again…and I plan on using it as a guidebook again and again.”

    Yes, you are all on to me, you clever little minxes. The Tao of Dating was never really meant as just a dating book. I not-so-secretly want you to make your whole life better! Heresy, I know.

    So I’m thrilled to report that (more…)

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  • On pain and how to handle it

    On the morning of Saturday, March 15, I woke up to shooting and stabbing pain down the right side of my neck, upper back and right arm. The pain encircled my ribs and was literally breathtaking.

    I figured I must have slept with my neck in a funny position and a little massage would relieve it. But there was no part of my neck and back that my visiting friend could touch without eliciting a howl from yours truly. So I called my acupuncturist and bodywork specialist Steve, who was kind enough to accommodate me on short notice. Although the session gave me some relief, I realized that this was a different beast than a simple stiff neck.

    Eventually, I found an experienced physical therapist/bodyworker based in San Rafael named Al Chan, whose deep knowledge of anatomy combined with his iron paws (I call his technique “Ow now, wow later”) helped put me on the mend.

    This article is not about the clinical course of my ailment, though. This is about (more…)

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  • “Why don’t men approach me?”: An epic email exchange on self-esteem and the single woman

    I recently had this 5-day email exchange with one of my readers. It brought up a lot of issues which I’ve found are not just common amongst women but pretty much universal. I’m talking about low self-esteem here, ladies. And it seems as if the prettier and more talented a person is, the lower her self-esteem.

    To a man observing your magnificence from a distance, this can be baffling. The good news is that after this email exchange, I had some insight into the root of the problem. Read through to the end to get to my commentary. I insert additional commentary [in brackets] where I feel it illustrates a point, or just to crack a joke of dubious taste.

    Here’s our exchange below just as it occurred (with small edits for clarity). I have not edited Rosie’s letters since she expressed herself in perfect grammar and without any spelling mistakes. Clearly this is a woman who is highly educated, intelligent, and likely a perfectionist (read: pointlessly hard on herself). If any of this resembles someone you know (ahem!), I encourage you to read on.

    On 11/10/13 2:15 PM, Rosie wrote:

    Dear Dr. Binazir,

    I have a quick question for you.

    So I have been trying to go out more often – it’s hard with long hours in lab and a long commute, and I am a bit of a homebody. Nevertheless, I know I’m not meeting anyone sitting on my tush at home, so I signed up for this network that connects people who have graduated from top tier colleges. And I went to a lecture on politics hosted for these people last week.

    I went by myself – which is a huge step outside of my comfort zone – because I know groups of girlfriends can intimidate guys. I also followed your 40% rule – curly brown hair down, wearing tight black pencil skirt below the knees and short-sleeve blouse unbuttoned on the low side.

    I get there and it was a huge sausage fest, so I’m thinking I’m golden and I position myself near to the men I want to talk to, trying to smile and catch their eye whenever one looks my way (which I’ll admit I do have trouble with since I’m nervous around men, but I’m working on it and fighting through the awkwardness).
    And not one approaches me.

    I noticed almost all of these men were forming groups of 3-6 guys and chatting among themselves. Not one broke away to talk to me or invited me into their group. I ended up initiating conversation with one guy but that fizzled out once the lecture began and he didn’t find me to continue it afterwards. Needless to say. I was very confused and kinda sad because I thought I had done everything right.

    My friend says that since I’m pretty, confident, and whip smart, they’re scared of me and that they were afraid of being made fun of if they broke rank to talk to me. Is this true? I’m literally the least frightening person out there. And was what my friend said the true reason no guy approached me? Thanks, Rosie

    On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 3:54 PM, <DrAli> wrote:

    Rome wasn’t built in a day, Rosie. Keep at it!

    Now, if a golden ticket is sitting on a countertop and no one hands it to you, it doesn’t mean the universe hates you. It just means you put constraints on your behavior that didn’t allow you to benefit from the abundance (eg “sausagefest”) that was presented to you. Your experiments don’t do themselves on your own, do they? Well, in this department, you’re also not a potted plant. Do stuff!

    So yes, you did some things right (eg dressing up, showing up). But you didn’t do everything right. Most important, you didn’t seize control of your own destiny, and that’s what I sense is missing here. If there’s someone you want to speak to, speak to him. It’s as simple as that. You’ll get better at it the more you practice.

    In which city is this all happening, by the way? Best, AB

    On 11/12/13 1:20 PM, Rosie wrote:

    I’m in DC. Apparently dating sucks here, or so I’ve been told. I have met some guys from the events, I’m just not at all attracted to them like that. [This is the first salvo of negativity. More to come. -AB]

    I am very shy around men – always have been – so it is very hard for me to make eye contact and start conversations with them. And then I completely nerd out on them and talk a lot of science and my research because that’s what I do a lot of the time and it’s my passion (plus I work on malarial vaccine development, which I’m sure just reels them in) – or I go on about my favorite off-the-wall TV shows and books and my new rescue cat.

    [Notice the expressions like “nerd out” or “off-the-wall TV shows” carry an implicit negative judgment about her perfectly normal tastes and tendencies. The gratuitous takedown of the self begins. -AB]

    So I guess I just don’t know what to talk to them about, so I don’t know how to lead into a conversation or be flirty (I’m TERRIBLE at it.). [TERRIBLE!] Or if I do start (badly) flirting [BADLY!] with a guy, it invariably happens that he has a girlfriend and I feel terrible/ awkward/ embarrassed. And I don’t have any other single girls to turn to – almost everyone I know is in a serious relationship or engaged. I don’t want to hear “it will happen soon when you’re not looking” anymore, especially now that it’s the holidays and I know I’ll have to fend off questions from my family. 

    I’d much rather be receptive and have them come to me (I am a masculine energy person since I’ve been single for my whole life and have to do everything myself, so I’m trying very hard to accept my feminine energy, which I deny a lot of the time because I connote femininity with being weak). Then I at least know they find me interesting and I don’t feel like they’re just humoring me if I talk to them first. 

    [Ever seen a woman give birth? Even better, have you asked your mom how long she was in labor to bring you to the planet? When I was in medicine, I saw women who were in labor for 30 freakin’ hours! Not exactly the stuff that weak is made of. But I digress. -AB]

    I guess the reason I feel so down about this right now is because I feel like no guys notice me while all my friends are super happy with fantastic boyfriends. They just talk about wedding Pinterests and themes and I have nothing to contribute and it makes me feel very alone and when you routinely battle low self-esteem, sitting there silently and getting ragged on (albeit lovingly) for becoming a cat lady doesn’t put you in a good headspace. Because if guys did notice me, wouldn’t they want to come up and talk to me? 

    [Ladies — guys are noticing you, but it’s not that easy for us to approach you, just so you know. It’s not a trivial thing to put yourself out there and risk your dignity with a total stranger. Again, no need to be hard on yourself.]

    On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 9:20 PM, <DrAli> wrote:

    DC has a surplus of single women over single men, so it’s going to be a little tougher there. Still, no excuse. All you need is one good one :)

    Sounds to me like you’re overthinking it. If you want a fuller diagnosis, zap me a photo (especially if in said outfit). Right now I have no idea what these boys are running away from/not approaching.

    Also, one of the biggest fallacies of life is thinking someone else is somehow better off than you. Said girlfriends don’t tell you about how the dude leaves his smelly socks around the house, or about the fabulous wedding that ends in rancorous divorce down the road 50% of the time. Count your blessings. AB

    [She sends me two photos of her, one solo and one with a friend. Although maybe not five-alarm sriracha hot-sauce hot, by any human standard Rosie is a babe – cute, slim, elegant. I would totally chat her up at a party, especially since I’m a sucker for glasses. Smart girls rule! That said, the friend in the picture is sriracha hot.

    Which brings me to one of the only bits that I edited out of The Tao of Dating at the urging of my female friends: If you are hanging out with a friend who is noticeably better-looking than you, most guys won’t even notice you. It’s like you’re the moon, and the sun just came up – poof, you vanish. If you are going out for the purpose of meeting guys, go with someone who’s about as good-looking as you are or less so. As much as I wish it weren’t true, this is the way the world works. And women do it, too, as I can attest to personally. Do not BYOCB to the party (bring your own cock-blocker) – totally counterreproductive. And yeah, that does say counterREproductive.]

    On 11/13/13 8:36 PM, Rosie wrote:

    I heard that DC’s odds aren’t particularly in my favor (I had to put in a Hunger Games reference, exhibit A of my nerdiness). 

    [Approximately 5 squintillion other people also read or watched Hunger Games, so if it’s a sin, it’s a pretty universal one]

    I don’t have any pictures of me in that outfit – I usually avoid taking pictures of myself because no matter how good I look in person, I end up looking awful on camera. The pictures I sent you are a bit old (maybe one or two years or so), but I haven’t changed my appearance at all, really. I’m the girl in the glasses. I’m very petite – 5’2″ on a good day, 110-115 pounds or so (I never weigh myself unless I’m at a doctor’s, so I can’t say for sure), huge curly hair, now with red cat-eye glasses. 

    Maybe I am overthinking it. I’m a huge analyzer because I’m a scientist and evaluating something from all angles is required for my job. 

    [Perhaps it’s a good idea to leave the job behind when you’re going out then, ladies. You don’t wear the lab coat to the party, right?

    And I guess you’re right about thinking someone else is better off than you. I do know that it makes me bitter sometimes, but I try to see when I’m getting to that point. Just kinda take a step back and be like, okay, I’m going to acknowledge and accept I feel this way even though it’s not the way I want to feel especially towards my friends, whom I love and am genuinely happy that they’re happy. Maybe it’s because I don’t hear the uglier/less glamorous side of things so all I really hear about is just the roses and poetry and Tiffany’s. And the fact that I literally have nothing – no boy toy, no guy I’m even interested in (and my celeb crushes on Benedict Cumberbatch and Evan Peters don’t count, apparently) – makes it harder to keep smiling.

    [This industrial-strength sob story would be funny if I hadn’t heard it at some point from every woman I know. And I do not know who Benedict Bumbersnatch is, but it definitely sounds like the item I’m avoiding on the brunch menu.]

    On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 2:04 PM, <DrAli> wrote:

    You are most definitely overthinking it :) The length of the emails and detailed rumination are pathognomonic for the thinking disease.

    [Pathognomonic is one of my favorite words of all time. Worth taking 5sec to google it.]

    Instead of ruminating or comparing, start with gratitude for what there is — being young, smart, good-looking and parasite-free is a fine start. Then start having fun with the whole process. Fun has no goal but fun. Play with it. If you keep doing that instead of overthinking, things will have no choice but to shift.

    On 11/14/13 12:05 PM, Rosie  wrote:

    I am? So does that mean I’m pretty so I’m scary to them? That’s the reason guys don’t approach me? 

    [Have you noticed the fishing for validation here? “So you think I’m pretteeee?” C’mon, you know you’ve done it yourself. And have you noticed how I’m not giving any validation? Because outside validation is like crack – one dose just keeps you wanting more. There is no end to that. It’s also an instrument by which women can easily be manipulated. Someone can control you simply by giving or withdrawing approval. To give a momentary bit of approval would be the temporary treatment. But that’s not what we’re looking for. We need to go for a cure. The cure is to stop looking for temporary external solutions and to seek permanent internal solutions instead.]

    I don’t know how to play or to have fun with flirting – it’s just anxiety-inducing to me. I do things for a reason. Being efficient is part of my job and my personality. I don’t like putting in effort into something or someone that’s not going to pan out (maybe this is why I failed at online dating, I hated it) AT LEAST for a few dates and good times. So I don’t want to waste my time flirting with a guy only to find out later he has a girlfriend or he is not interested or he only wants to get laid – because when I do put myself out there, this is what happens and I feel embarrassed and sad afterwards. 

    So how can I make myself have fun flirting? And how can I make myself more approachable? Any tips? 

    On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 1:12 PM,  <DrAli> wrote:

    Rosie – you need to relinquish your need to be right. Even now you’re arguing with me — and arguing for your own limitations. You sure you want to be right about that? Let it go. I recommend meditation in the morning and two glasses of wine when you go out :) AB

    On 11/15/13 10:29 AM, Rosie  wrote:

    I just have a hard time actually believing/accepting that I’m pretty. I guess I just assumed since no guys were talking to me, I wasn’t pretty enough to garner their attention. [More negative self-talk and fishing for validation]

    But even with the wine, I don’t know if all this will become more fun for me.  

    [And now, you get to see the part where I lose my patience]

    On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 3:27 PM,  <DrAli> wrote:

    “And I’ve tried meditation and I can’t keep my mind quiet enough.”

    Yeah, and you’ve been to the gym and still haven’t made it to the Olympics yet, you big slacker. You should probably stop exercising for the rest of your life.

    Well, I guess you’re right. You’re not pretty enough, you’re not interesting enough, you’re not flirty enough, you’re not fun enough, not mindful enough. So it’s time you found yourself a nice cave somewhere and just retire from civilization since you’re such a total failure! You managed to convince me, so — well done. If I’m your biggest advocate and you’ve exhausted me with your negative self-talk, cannot imagine what you’re like with the other single guys.

    Take it easy. And go do something to make other people happy instead of focusing on you and your completely imagined shortcomings.
    Signing off,
    AB

    On 11/15/13 12:47 PM, Rosie  wrote:

    Okay, that was harsh, but I needed it. I was mad when I first read your response, but now that I thought about it, you’re right, I just wasn’t ready to accept any of it yet. I have a lot of work to do. I do apologize for subjecting you to all my moping and being a drag.  

    Thanks. 

    On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 4:44 PM,  <DrAli> wrote:

    This is called provocative therapy or motivational interviewing. You agree with the client’s sob story, then intensify it to the point that she finally snaps out of it and starts to stand up for herself — “Hey wait, I’m not that bad.” Self-directed miracles ensue.
    I’m hoping you got that. Part of me thinks you’re actually looking for a cave now.

    On Fri, 15 Nov 2013 16:47:48, Rosie  wrote:

    No cave shopping going on over here, no worries. I did get it, loud and clear, and it was exactly what I needed. Thank you.  =]

    ****

    On the last day of this exchange, I went out at noon to City Hall to see thousands of people gathered to make a 5-year old boy with leukemia happy by turning San Francisco into Gotham City. This was inspiring, and it got me thinking that low self-esteem is just another form of narcissism. Get over yourself, be grateful for being alive, and go make someone else’s day.

    The Buddhist concept of anatta (or no-self) says that there is no fixed entity you can identify as the self. You’re constantly changing: breath coming in and out; neurons firing; neurotransmitters sloshing around; cells dying and multiplying; tissue being replaced, re-ordered, renewed.

    Low self-esteem means focusing all attention on this made-up entity called the self to the exclusion of everything else in the world: the vastness of galaxies; the blue sky that protects you from deadly ultraviolet and cosmic rays; the earth that supports you now and every day, holding you fast and not letting you spin out into space; the fact that 70 trillion cells in your body cooperate every day to keep your heart beating, your lungs breathing and your intestines shimmying even when you’re knocked out cold in bed and have no conscious control over any of it.

    You are surrounded by billions of miracles every second of existence. To ignore all of them and to focus on imagined shortcomings of this imagined self is an act of solipsism, narcissism and simple arrogance. Who are you to put down this miracle of creation! It’s like making fun of an oak tree because it’s not a sequoia. Sheez.

    The solution is simple, if not necessarily easy: focus on things other than the self. Notice the everyday miracles surrounding  you, and express gratitude for them: “Thank you Mother Earth for holding me up!” Do this dozens of times a day. And then go cheer other people up. Whose answered prayer have you been today? Whose day did you make today? Who did you make feel like a million bucks today?

    Service is always an arm’s reach away. Moreover, it’s the only thing that psychologists have found to increase self-esteem. So go forth and volunteer, serve, help out. Read to kidsGive a microloan to someone who can put the money to far better use than you (I just gave 4 of them between the writing of that last sentence and this one — took me 15min). Do it for purely selfish reasons: to make yourself a healthier person.

    You ladies often ask me, “Why am I not meeting Mr Right?” And maybe it’s because the universe is doing you a favor. Maybe right now you’re a mess. You have no idea what you want and don’t know how to be kind to yourself, let alone him. If he were to waltz along, you’d screw it up so bad he would speed away and you’d never see him again. And that would be tragic. So relax, take your time, work on yourself, and when you are ready for love, he will show up. Usually within minutes, since he’s either been staring you in the face the whole time or is right around the corner.

    And remember not to grasp too hard. What if you were to get that thing you were craving for so long, and then find out it wasn’t what you really wanted after all? T. S. Eliot, one the greatest poets of all time, had something to say about that in Four Quartets:

    I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
    For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
    For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
    But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
    Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
    So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

    So relax. Let your mud settle. Take in the good. Meditate. Enjoy life as it is. Do not take yourself down for any reason — your adversaries don’t need any help in that department. Appreciate the miracles. Wait purposefully as you grow. And let the miracles ensue.

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  • Recording of “Compelling People” interview with John Neffinger

    Below is an MP3 recording of the interview I did with John Neffinger, co-author of Compelling People: The Hidden Qualities That Make Us Influential. Now I’ve known John for a while, so I was able to extract some top tips from his book for your delectation and enrichment. Also, John was kind enough to answer questions for 30 extra minutes, which means this interview is 90 minutes of information-packed usefulness. Some of what we covered:

    • The tug-of-war between how warm we appear and how much strength we project, and how to balance the two
    • Tips for nailing a job interview
    • How warmth and strength figured in the fall and rise of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 Presidential campaign
    • The secret of the powerful smile which projects warmth without diminishing strength
    • The special challenges that race and gender present that make projecting strength tricky
    • Exercises to improve the way you present yourself right now

    Download JohnNeffinger_CompellingPeople1013, stick it on your iPhone or iPod or Android gizmo, and listen to it on your daily drive. Or listen to it using the media player here: 

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  • Book Review: “Compelling People”, or how to be a more effective human

    best book for increasing your personal power
    A compelling read

    Every once in a while, a book comes along that has the power to really change the way I see the world and move in it. In 2012, it was The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg. The year before, it was Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Compelling People: The Hidden Qualities That Make Us Influential by John Neffinger and Matthew Kohut is such a book.

    The central premise of the book is that in any encounter, people base how they feel about you based on how you project strength and warmth. Once you become aware of what your unconscious strength and warmth signals are, you can learn to modulate them to connect better with people, influence them, and just be a more effective all-around human being. From the worlds of psychology, neuroscience, acting, political science, they’ve compiled some of the best practices for presenting your best self to the world.

    Some things I like about this book:

    1) Neffinger and Kohut are seasoned professionals who have coached dozens of nationally-known (more…)

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  • Pop-Up Teleclass: “How to Be Irresistible” Mon May 27

    Ladies –

    I haven’t had a teleclass for you in a while, so it’s time! I’ve done the “How to Be Irresistible: Love Is in Your Body” workshop live a couple of times, and it was a lot of fun. So now I’m going to do it in teleclass format so all of you who can’t make it to San Francisco can attend. Here’s a sampling of what you’re going to learn:

    • The real power you have in relationships and how to access it
    • The latest research on what love really is, physiologically and neurologically
    • The importance of positive emotions and how to have more of them
    • How to embody love
    • The problem of desire and how to solve it
    • Guided visualizations and meditations to get you feeling these principles in your bones
    This is really more like a highly interactive workshop than me just giving a lecture, so come ready participate and be in a place where you can stand up and move around a little (i.e. not in a car). And yes, I will record it in case you happen to miss it.

    The teleclass will go for about 75 min, with about 15min of Q&A at the end. Here’s the call-in info:

    • WHAT: “How to Be Irresistible” Teleclass
    • WHEN: Mon 27 May 2013, 6pm PT/9pm ET/11am Sydney (on Tue)
    • WHERE: On your phone, when you’re not driving and you’re free to do goofy-looking exercises
    When you sign up, remember to use the 67% off discount code I emailed you! It brings the price down from $75 to $25:

    Catch up with you then and there

    Dr Ali

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  • How to Be Irresistible: Recording of Talk from 5 Feb 2013

    Ladies –

    As promised, I recorded the workshop I gave on 5 Feb in San Francisco. I recorded it 3 separate ways, and 2 of them experienced technical failure. The following is the backup recording of the whole workshop, all 100 minutes. It’s not edited, because I just switched to a Mac from a PC and don’t know how to twiddle with stuff yet, so feel free to fast forward through the slow spots. Some topics I cover:

    • Loving-Kindness Meditation (metta) and the importance of self-love
    • The problem of desire and wanting stuff, and why it’s a Catch-22 — unless you do this one thing
    • The physiology of love and how you can create it on demand, according to the new book Love 2.0 by Barbara Fredrickson
    • And 30min of provocative Q&A
    [audio:http://taoofdating.com//wp-content/uploads/2013/02/BeIrresistible_DrAliBinazir_full.mp3|titles=How to Be Irresistible: Love & Dating for Smart Women]

    How to Be Irresistible: Love & Dating for Smart Women (right-click to download – 40 Mb mp3)

    The following are two downloadable mp3s starting at the 50min mark of the talk — right about when I cover the topic of how to be irresistible. The first one is all lecture; the second is all Q&A.

    [audio:http://taoofdating.com//wp-content/uploads/2013/02/BeIrresistible_DrAliBinazir_pt1.mp3|titles=BeIrresistible_DrAliBinazir_pt1]

    BeIrresistible_DrAliBinazir_pt1 (right-click to download)

    [audio:http://taoofdating.com//wp-content/uploads/2013/02/BeIrresistible_DrAliBinazir_pt2.mp3|titles=BeIrresistible_DrAliBinazir_pt2]

    BeIrresistible_DrAliBinazir_pt2 (right-click to download)

    Hope you find these useful, and feel free to send them on to friends if you feel they would benefit. Give me your feedback in the comments section so I know what works for you.

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  • The Compassionate Brain by Dr Rick Hanson and some superstars of neuroscience

    I have some excellent news for you. There is this free online seminar series that you should take advantage of. It’s called:

    Rick Hanson’s The Compassionate Brain – Free Video Seminar Series

    I’m really excited about this one, and every one of you should sign up for it. Why? Because it’s being put on by renowned psychologist and author Dr Rick Hanson, author of Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love and Wisdom and Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time. And he has assembled an all-star cast of speakers on the topic of ‘The Compassionate Brain’. If you don’t know who all of them are yet, that’s okay – I don’t either. But the few that I do know are teachers so wise and so inspiring that just an hour with them can change the course of your whole life: (more…)

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  • Perfectionism as a disease

    “Hi Dr. Ali,
    I enjoyed your article in HuffPost and reading through your blog. I am a 29yo woman with very little (basically no) dating experience.  To provide you context, I received a BS in engineering and MBA, both from Ivy League institutions.
    I would say over the past 2-3 years, I have tried to be more open, vulnerable, and transparent when I go on dates.  I am by no means perfect, and I don’t pretend to be.  I worry however, that the areas in my life in which I am a ‘damsel in distress’ aren’t particularly feminine.  I’m a horrible (more…)

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  • How to stand up to the media’s disrespect of women

    A few days ago, Ashley Judd responded to some ungracious comments in the media about her “puffy face”. Her article is so eloquent, reasoned and right on that every woman and man should read it. Here’s how it starts:

    “The Conversation about women’s bodies exists largely outside of us, while it is also directed at (and marketed to) us, and used to define and control us. The Conversation about women happens everywhere, publicly and privately. We are described and detailed, our faces and bodies analyzed and picked apart, our worth ascertained and ascribed based on the reduction of personhood to simple physical objectification. Our voices, our personhood, our potential, and our accomplishments are regularly minimized and muted… ” Continue reading here

     

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