Is ‘What Should I Do With My Life?’ The Right Question?

Asking Questions “The mere formulation of a problem,” said Einstein, “is far more often essential than its solution.”  In other words, when a scientist thinks about an issue, it is the kinds of questions that she asks that are most important. This idea is no less true in everyday life than it is in the […]

Meaningful Work

Why Having Meaningful Work is Essential: Insights from Depth Psychology

“Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.” ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky According to Carl Jung, when we lose what he called the ‘symbolic’ dimension of our work and understand it only in economic terms, we experience suffering. What Jung calls symbolic, Dostoevsky, in the quote above, calls ‘meaningful work’.  […]

Evolution and Introversion

The Evolutionary Value of Introversion

One of the questions that I received during my webinar, Networking For Introverts, last Wednesday was: “What is the evolutionary value of introversion?”It’s a great question and I wasn’t very satisfied with the answer I gave at the time. So here are some of my further thoughts regarding this: Two of the characteristics associated with […]

A Fool Such As I

“For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.”  (1 Cor. 1:25) Two years ago, at just about this time of year, I was preparing to take the Propaedeuticum — or Stage 1 exams — at the Jung Institute of Boston. This set of exams […]

The Dream of One’s Life

Here is a nice little promotional video by mythologist Michael Meade for his book, Fate and Destiny: The Two Agreements of the Soul. I am not yet familiar with that book, but I have read his book The Water of Life and the anthology of poetry that he edited with Robert Bly and James Hillman.  I have also heard Meade speak. He is an engaging storyteller and his work is well worth knowing.

Some take away quotes from the video:

"The question isn't, 'Do I have a calling?'  The question is,  'Have I heard it?'"

"One of our key responsibilities in life -- separate from career, separate from family, separate from anything else -- is to live out [our] dream, to respond to [our] calling, and to unfold our life from within."

Here is the video:

Happiness, Success, and the Soul

Positive Psychology is an approach to psychology that seeks to understand what factors are at work in healthy states. It seeks to make a scientific understanding of things like happiness, taking the position that happiness is not the absence of unhappiness, but a positive state that can be cultivated and increased. Recently I was directed […]

“We Are The Great Danger”

This quote showed up several times in my Twitter feed recently: “The only thing we have to fear on this planet is man.” ~ C.G. Jung This was a frequent theme for Jung later in his life, particularly after having witnessed the horrors of the first and second world wars. Here is a clip of […]