Pursuing the Excellent Life

Ideas, values, and living life well

Dec. 8, 2024

Stress trifecta

Overview/introduction Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like stress has been in overload mode lately. Maybe you feel the same way.  We all feel stressed from time to time, and we all experience stress differently. Stress is a part of life…

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Dec. 8, 2024

PAC model of managing stress

Overview/introduction As regular listeners have heard me say more than once, stress is inevitable. But that doesn’t mean that stress can’t be managed. After giving this a lot of thought, it occurred to me that there are three main appro…

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Dec. 8, 2024

Stress and anger

Overview/introduction Over the last few episodes I’ve been talking about stress, what causes it and various ways to manage it. Today I want to add anger into the mix. Stress and anger are pretty closely linked in an oddly reciprocal relations…

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Dec. 8, 2024

Stress, good and bad

Stress and the appraisal process There’s no getting around it, life is often stressful. So, it’s useful to understand stress. We all kind of understand what stress is at some level, but what is it exactly? Stress is a psychological and …

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March 11, 2024

Nine Country Songs that are Actually Philosophy

[This article was originally published on Medium.] My wife, Tracy, and I moved out to the country a year ago. Since moving to the country and acquiring a horse and two (very funny) goats, I’ve been listening to a lot of country music ……

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Jan. 26, 2024

Craig guests on The Toddcast Show

Recently, I had a wide-ranging, enjoyable conversation with Todd Murat, host of the Toddcast Show. We talked about how I came to be a professor (spoiler: it was a twisty path), the current state of political discourse, the power of thoughts and the …

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Jan. 29, 2023

Comfort Is The Enemy

  Today I'm bringing you the first of a new kind of article, which I'm calling 5 Minute Flourishing. These are gonna be short, focused articles. I'll release them in between the regular articles. I'm doing this because I want you to keep flour…

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Jan. 28, 2023

See Your Possibilities, Not Your Limitations

Well, here we are in another new year. Who knows what 2023 will bring? Regardless of what it brings, you can flourish if you see your possibilities, not your limitations. In this article, I explain why this is, and how you shift your mindset to see …

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Dec. 15, 2022

Happy Holidays?

In this article I talk about the very real phenomenon of the holiday blues and offer some suggestions about how you can cope with feelings of loneliness and depression around the holidays.   Holiday Season Well, it's the holiday season. Chri…

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Dec. 14, 2022

Conflict Management

Effectively managing conflict isn’t always easy, but it’s always important. In this article, I share four useful approaches for managing conflict, and how to choose the right approach for any situation. I also provide some general tips o…

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