Where do you turn to learn how to live? If you’re like me, you might turn to books. Or mentors. Or podcasts. You might engage in philosophical discourse with friends, family, and colleagues. You might lean into the onslaught of research and studies conducted on the topics of happiness, meaning, and life satisfaction. You might reflect through the practice of journaling. These can all be useful...
Where do you live? To answer that question you might give me a location. Let’s say New York. And though it may be true that you live in New York, you really live in a HOUSE in New York. Let’s say a big house. And though it may be true that you live in a big house in New York, you really live in your HEAD in your big house. You live in between the walls of your head — right there with all your...
The rougher the road, the lighter the grip. I first learned how to ride a motorcycle in Northern Thailand, mostly on bumpy, rocky, winding roads. My natural tendency on many of the bumpy dirt roads was to tighten my grip on the handlebars. The rougher the road, the harder I clenched. Until I realized that by the end of the ride my hands were in such severe pain I couldn’t even open them all the...
The evolution of mankind:
Walk walk walk, hunt, rest rest rest.
Walk walk, farm, rest rest rest.
Walk, farm farm, rest rest.
Sit, farm farm farm, rest rest.
Sit, work, rest rest.
Sit, work work, rest rest.
Sit, work work work, rest.
Sit, coffee coffee coffee, work work work, booze booze booze.
Anytime you choose to think about the past you are trading the present moment in order to do so. This can be useful if you’re reflecting with the intention of learning something, but tread carefully with this trade. Similar to stock trading, there’s a fee for every transaction, and too many trades will leave you bankrupt.
What’s the ROI of meditation? Think of a common annoyance that triggers you. It could be that you’re triggered every time there’s traffic. Or every time someone is late to a meeting. Or every time your partner doesn’t do the dishes. And let’s say that each time you’re triggered you’re in a bad mood of sorts for 5 minutes before you come out of it. And you’re triggered 10 times a day. That’s 50...
Goals can be useful. They give you something to work toward. Goals can also be dangerous. They make you believe that things will be better when you get “there.” Where is “there?” And how will you know when you’re there? Becoming too goal-oriented is to become too future-oriented, and in doing so you put life in a place where it’s always just out of reach. The destination is always just over the...
I was on a jog, doing my own thing, lost in my own head. Other joggers were coming from the other direction, doing their own thing, lost in their own heads. Until one jogger coming toward me went out of his way to make eye contact and smile. A big warm smile and nod. And it lit me up a bit, gave me a little bump of joy and connection. About a minute later the next jogger came running my way...
They say that a leader must “win the hearts and minds” of their team. I think winning their hearts will do the trick. If you’ve got their heart, the mind will follow. So what’s the best way to win their hearts? One way is to speak to them FROM the heart. Words spoken from the heart land IN the heart. Words spoken from the head land IN the head. Too often, leaders try to inspire their teams...
What are your expectations of life? I’d heard plenty about the infamous “Delhi Belly” before my first trip to India — the fact that many first-time visitors get sick from the food. So I told myself ‘Hey look, you wanna go see the world, you’re gonna get sick. That’s the deal.’ I tried to accept the fact before it happened. When I DID get sick it was, in a way, okay. That’s what I was expecting...
Wherever you are on your personal and professional journey, you are (hopefully) growing and you are (hopefully) evolving. To evolve is to become something else; to become someone else. You are no longer the person you were before. But what happens if the people around you are not growing and evolving in the same way, or at the same pace? As a young boy playing soccer, my father moved me off of...
Connection. We all crave it. We all need it. COVID has been particularly challenging in the way it has left us feeling DISconnected. But why has it left us feeling so disconnected? That’s a question so obvious that we never thought to ask it. Perhaps it’s because the only way we know how to connect in this modern age is externally — through other people and through the world OUT THERE. Somewhere...
We think that we love things outside of ourselves. We think that we love people, places, objects. We have this idea that when we encounter these things they somehow “give us” the love that we feel. We think there’s a kind of flow of love that moves from them to us. But I don’t think that’s what’s happening. I think that what they’re doing is activating the love that we ALREADY had inside...
When I was kid I used to love playing on the seesaw. It wasn’t until later in life that I came to see the wisdom of the seesaw. Up and down, high and low, yin and yang. Does the seesaw not teach us everything we need to know about life? It also serves as a perfect model of correlation: as one side goes up, the other goes down. Like understanding and suffering. Have you noticed the correlation...
Historically, the goals that I’ve set for myself at the start of past new years have been “what” focused. What exactly am I going to DO this year? Where am I going to go? What am I going to produce? Examples would have included things like: go to the gym 4x/week, publish 100 posts, read 12 books, etc. This year, however, I’m taking a completely different approach. My goal setting for 2021 doesn’t...
You’re at a beautiful golf course. You’re standing at the first tee (par 4) and you are profoundly anxious. You’re anxious because you believe you only have one swing to get the ball in the hole. This is how most new grads feel coming out of university. They’re under the pretense that they have to “decide want they want to do,” and that they only get one swing to do so. I know this because I’ve...
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone” wrote the French philosopher Blaise Pascal back in the 17th century. According to Pascal, we fear the silence and we dread boredom. If at all possible, we would much rather fill our lives with distraction. We would rather do anything than get to know our true selves. Enter coronavirus, the...
