On what values can do, what virtues can do, and the identity that forms when you practice both I recently found myself coaching a business leader through articulating their company values, a process I've guided many times at MAC6. We identify what matters most, then build behavior statements: "We do X" or "We do Y," [...]

Some thoughts on election-night speeches, and what comes after Of all the things I read after Tuesday’s election, the line I remember best came from someone who lost. Republican Congressman Jeff Van Drew had just lost his South Jersey seat to Democrat Zack Mullock, the mayor of Cape May. He conceded in Sea Isle City [...]

On agency, responsibility, and the privilege of having a voice Next week, Americans will go to the polls. We will make choices about the people who represent us, the policies that shape our communities, and the direction of our shared future. I hope we recognize what an extraordinary privilege that is. We live in a [...]

Last month, Martin Seligman published Agency: The Psychological History of Human Progress. For those of us at Human Flourishing, and many of our friends at Heroic, this is exciting news. Seligman helped establish the field of positive psychology, and his work has profoundly shaped how we understand human well-being and what makes a good life. [...]

Heroic just published a new Philosopher’s Note on Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business by John Mackey and Raj Sisodia. It takes about 20 minutes to read, and it condenses the heart of the book. I’d like you to read it this week.Read the Philosopher's Note Michael Balchan, [...]

This essay came to life this past Friday evening. I was driving, half-listening to music, when the Buffalo Springfield song came on the radio. It stopped me. The nostalgia hit hard, the good parts of it and the harder parts too, and I felt like I had to write down what I was feeling. [...]

There's a young guy in my house running a cable line, and I'm doing the thing I'm terrible at, which is trying to talk to him while he works. Small talk and I have never gotten along; I feel about it the way other people feel about public speaking. But he's easy — twenty-four, maybe, [...]

For several months I had a performance coach named Lori, and about halfway through an ordinary video call, she dismantled a story I had been telling for twenty years... in one sentence. I want to set the scene, because I came into that call armed. I was complaining about my husband's career, and I complained [...]

I'm at a party on a rooftop terrace in Bogotá, Colombia, and someone asks how many times we've moved. I've got this one. I've told it a hundred times, in a hundred different ways. I'm good at it. The number lands, and there's a little intake of breath I'd come to expect... and then the [...]

Part 3 of 3 A Celebration of Canada, America, and the Friendships That Outlast Everything Every year on July 1st, I raise a glass to Canada — not as a courtesy or a diplomatic gesture, but because North Bay, Ontario is one of the places in the world where my family's story lives, and because [...]