Chris Loper has been writing about self-improvement and helping busy adults with habit formation since 2017. He also writes an education blog for parents and students for Northwest Educational Services. Along with Greg Smith, Chris is the cocreator of Parenting for Academic Success, a series of transformative classes that create empowered parents, confident students, and harmonious families. His most recent endeavor combines his academic and habit-formation expertise to help students thrive in college. Visit SmartCollegeHabits.com to learn more. In 2021, Chris published a humorous memoir titled Wood Floats and Other Brilliant Observations, a book that blends crazy stories with practical life lessons. He lives in Issaquah, WA where he is the owner of South Cove Tutoring.
Like many Americans, I spent the past few weeks constantly checking the news. The drama unfolding in the Senate was gripping, and I felt compelled to follow along as often as I could. But, now that it’s over and I’ve had a few days to reflect, I’m questioning the wisdom of trying to stay on top of this or any other news story. All my news-checking certainly didn’t change the… Read More »Staying on Top vs. Getting to the Bottom
This week’s post is deliberately short and simple because I’m giving myself permission to rest. In fact, that’s the whole message: You have permission to rest. I believe it was Tal Ben-Shahar, in his Positive Psychology class at Harvard, who said that the problem is not that we work too much, but that we rest too little. Stress, he argued, is like physical exercise: It can make us stronger as… Read More »Permission to Rest
Over the years, I have come to embrace being weird. However, I don’t mean weird for weird’s sake. My weird has a purpose. Despite how I sometimes appear, I am not heeding the advice of Robin Williams, who said: “You got to be crazy. It’s too late to be sane. Too late. You got to go full tilt bozo. Cause you’re only given a little spark of madness, and if… Read More »Be Weird
Yesterday morning I listened to this episode of the podcast Hidden Brain. In it, researcher Ming Kuo discusses the findings that show how we benefit socially, psychologically, and physically from spending time in nature. Green spaces reduce social conflict, increase mental health, lower blood pressure, and improve immunity. This was not news to me: I already knew about the many benefits of spending time in nature, both from personal experience… Read More »The Power of Daily Wisdom