Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

we might even feel a pang of jealousy when a partner or friend spends a lot of time alone, doing something that doesn’t involve us. We might feel anger, or sadness, or fear, but what goes through our mind is that we are jealous. And the reason for our jealousy (and the accompanying emotion) is that the other person or activity is threatening to tak

Discouraged: I’m losing my confidence and enthusiasm about any future effort—I’m losing the motivation and confidence to persist.

Disconnection is often equated with social rejection, social exclusion, and/or social isolation, and these feelings of disconnection actually share the same neural pathways with feelings of physical pain. Current neuroscience research shows that the pain and feelings of disconnection are often as real as physical pain. And just as healing physical

I’m not furious that you’re okay with something that’s really good and imperfect. I’m furious because I want to be okay with something that’s really good and imperfect.

Everyone is trying to answer this question: What’s the most effective way to be in connection with and in service to someone who is struggling, without taking on their issues as our own?

I used to think the best way to go through life was to expect the worst. That way, if it happened, you were prepared, and if it didn’t happen, you were pleasantly surprised. Then I was in a car accident and my wife was killed. Needless to say, expecting the worst didn’t prepare me at all. And worse, I still grieve for all of those wonderful moments

Vulnerability is the first thing we look for in other people, and the last thing we want to show them about ourselves.

What’s really interesting about their research findings is that we can have high self-esteem but still be insecure if we’re overly critical of our imperfections. Because our self-esteem is an assessment of who we are and what we’ve accomplished compared to our values and our goals, even with high self-esteem we can still feel insecure if we’re self

“Painting done” means fully walking through my expectations of what the completed task will look like, including when it will be done, what I’ll do with the information, how it will be used, the context, the consequences of not doing it, the costs—everything we can think of to paint a shared picture of the expectations. It’s one of the most powerfu