Estimated reading time: 6 minutes — “Taking a break from my mental health to focus on Tinder,” I read once in someone’s dating bio. There was nothing I related to more for a decade of dating. The worst of it was in 2016 when I could be found with si

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes — Sound baths can be a glorious, transformational experience. You might walk into a room where a sound healer has a wall of gongs, iridescent singing bowls, and an assortment of vibrational accouterments, like cryst

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes — When I was young, I wrote stories constantly—mostly handwriting them, developing strong hand muscles in the process since there were times that I spent six or eight hours in a day writing. (“Isn’t that a little ob

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes — Love, in the three Abrahamic traditions, can seem impossibly demanding. Love insists that we not only act on behalf of others, love insists that we feel the suffering of others, that we place ourselves in the pla

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes — On Aug. 23, 1987, 26-year-old Selonia Reed was found dead in the parking lot of a gas station in Hammond, Louisiana. Nearly 40 years after her death, her husband Reginald Reed was sentenced to life in prison for

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes — Life’s journey often feels like a relentless pursuit of happiness and fulfillment, yet so many of us find ourselves caught in cycles of negativity and self-doubt. Positive psychology offers a different lens—a refr

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes — The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention. Kindness is not only good for others, it’s good for your own wellbeing. When you help others out of genuine concern for them, your levels of

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes — I grew up in a home where at best I was unwanted, at worst, the scapegoat for the family’s woes. The trauma began early, at age four, after being taken from my loving aunt who raised me when my mother, her sister

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes — Anytime I’m on a panel or speaking or in session with my highly ambitious, successful female coaching clients there comes a point when we talk about balance. On panels and in workshops, I’m always asked, how do yo

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes — After stopping to smell my twentieth flower, I took a deep breath and headed to the mossy spot I knew Josh liked. I found him lying with his arm over his eyes, his distressed pose. I sat down next to him, my stom

Estimated reading time: 13 minutes — [This essay includes excerpts from This Fresh Existence: Heart Teachings from Bhikkhuni Dhammananda (Windhorse Publications, April, 2024)] I have always been a spiritual seeker. At age four, I asked my brother, w

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes — I am a two-time breast cancer survivor, but my story is not really about cancer and its trials. It’s about how cancer taught me that humor, nature, exercise and relationships with both family and “found family” h

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes — Allowance is a tool which can quite literally change all aspects of life including relationships, finances, career and more. Although allowance is a powerful and pragmatic way of improving one’s life, it is not so

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes My journey from an average SAT scorer to achieving a perfect score and eventually founding Prep Expert has been both challenging and enlightening. Along this path, one of the most significant hurdles I faced was tes

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes — 1970 in pre-Choice America. The lonely only child of a high-ranking naval officer and a socially ambitious mother, after our eighth move in thirteen years, I longed for a normal adolescence — to have lasting frien

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes — In this Q&A, Bill Miles, Co-Founder and Creative Director of Best Self Magazine, puts forth questions for Dr. Sweta Vikram, inspired by her new book, The Loss that Binds Us: 108 Tips on Coping with Grief and Loss.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes — Many people think of trauma solely as an incident that happened to us or someone else that is intense, violent, or life-threatening; however, trauma can also be a suffering from emotional or psychological pain tha

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes — My grandmother was fourteen when a man in her Southern Italian village asked to marry her. He was twenty-eight, a stranger to Gramma. She said, No! But her mother told her, “Marry him. He’ll take you to America.”

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes — It started with a simple question: “Mommy, can I give you a goal this year?” At the time I was working long stressful hours leading a large client relationship for an advertising agency while balancing having two

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes — It’s an unfortunate reality that our planet’s biodiversity is under threat, with numerous species facing the risk of extinction. The state of endangered species today is a complex tapestry of challenges, opportuni

Estimated reading time: 13 minutes — At Best Self, we’re always questioning: How can we live more fully? Are we living with purpose? Is there meaning to our journey beyond our physical existence? So when we learned of Susan Grau’s work as an intuiti

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes — Most of us strive to be happy loving people. Our tendency to look outside ourselves to find acceptance, safety, love, and completion can misdirect our energies, and have us searching for the pathway to meaning in

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes — In Hyderabad, India, from December 29, 2023 to January 13, 2024, a historic and unprecedented event unfolded. Ten thousand people from across the globe participated in an experiment to create peace in the world th

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes — When my wife passed away in 2017, I needed to downsize from a house to an apartment. I was too overwhelmed by grief and the complications of life to think clearly about much of anything. So I filled three storage

— Although the tinsel, the fairy lights, and the fa-la-la of the holiday season are meant to uplift, December is actually a tough time for many people. One survey found that more than half of Americans in 2022 felt sad and lonely during the holidays,

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes — We live in a world where war coverage is live, social media keyboard warriors are loud and fierce, and racism and “anti-thisism” and “anti-thatism” ring loudly in our ears. Every day, we are bombarded with negativ

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes — I have thought a lot about how I went from low self-esteem at age 15 to…well, low self-esteem at age 78. This admittedly does not make the kind of narrative arc that publishers respond to. But however little progr

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes — In today’s fast-paced world, the concept of self-care is often touted as essential for adults. However, what many might overlook is the importance of this practice for the younger generation. Just as we, as adults

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes — Mental health and wellbeing in the work environment is being discussed around the world in new ways. In these turbulent times, many people suffer from depression and anxiety, which makes the conversation of mental

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes — A dark cloud of shame hovered over me for many years. As thunder roared and rain poured down, I imagined God was angry with me. He threw things in Heaven and cried for everything I did wrong. Because I lost my vir