Americans are generally rewarded for acting like Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti western. And, why not?

Those characters were gods of cool. They were always right, always powerful, and always won in the end. I grew up worshipping them. Unfortunately, adulthood is not as simple as the characters in those 100-minute films.

We can try really, really, hard to be cowboy-cool, but it seldom works… especially not for our partners, children, friends, brains, and hearts. Many of us had parents that tried to be that tough, and they often died too young and left us lost. Many of us work our tails off to succeed in the work world, yet fail in our home lives. We wake up one morning, look in the mirror, and don’t know the person looking back.