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Colbert tells an inspiring story about his late show mentor.  The grizzled old producer told the new host to start taping two episodes on the last day of the workweek. And then, the way he executed that second show could become the way he did the show every night. Because at that point, he’d be so tired that he wouldn’t have time to worry about making the right choices.  Every one of us must…

Chodron’s book on compassionate living reminds us that the people we encounter everyday activate the karma that we haven’t worked out yet.  They mirror us and give us the chance to befriend all of that ancient stuff that we carry around like a backpack full of granite boulders.  It’s another one of the many risks of intimacy. People in our lives trigger our unresolved shit. Even complete strangers.  We’re…

After being shut down so many times, you just stop trying.  You start feeling like a waste of space. Like you want to hammer a hole in the floor and fall right through it. And the inner monologue is: Wow, if this is what it feels like to give my best, why would I continue? Why am I even here?  It’s a really shitty feeling, struggling to believe that…

The artist’s statement is equally as inspiring as the artist’s sculpture.  This micro manifesto, this conscious declaration of creative intentions, this vital link of communication between the artist and the rest of the world, that’s what touches me.  Not the thing, but the thinking behind it.  Rozoff, for example, is a novelist who writes what he calls escapist literature. James says that his books aren’t the kind that help you…

Each of us goes to great lengths to preserve what we consider to be our identity.  It’s a control thing. We cling to our precious little personal brand that because it provides us some kind of certainty.  But the funny thing about identity is, it’s not something that’s given, once and for all. There is no fixed point at which we can decisively say, I am that.  Each one…

Business would be great if it weren’t for the customers.  Not to mention the vendors, suppliers, employees, managers, contractors, interns, coworkers and every other maddening human being we come into contact with on a typical day.  These people are so damned needy. Just go away and let me do my job.  Unfortunately, we’re all in the people business. There’s no escaping it, only embracing it.  And so, our job…

It’s an illusion to think we can avoid the line of fire.  Agony cannot be inoculated against. No matter how many precautions we take, no matter how many islands of safety we seek, and no matter how lucky and blessed and abundant we feel, hurt comes for everybody.  The hard part is growing our ability to extend compassion to all the uninvited visitors that inevitably enter.  Here’s a scenario:…

Wooten’s book about the spiritual search for growth through music was transformative for me. Quite possibly the best twenty bucks spent on my artistic education.  Here’s one passage that was especially striking.  It’s always easier to build upon beauty than it is to pretend it is not there and try to create it from scratch.  This insight is especially helpful when our project screeches to a stop because the task…

Kanata, the thousand year old alien and spiritual adviser to the young jedi, makes a powerful point about growth in her famous call to adventure speech.  “Whoever you’re waiting for, she tells the young apprentice, they’re never coming back. The belonging you seek is not behind you, but ahead. Feel it. The light, it’s always been there. Let it guide you.” This scene brought tears to my eyes. Because each of…

Toffler once wrote in his bestselling book that change is avalanching upon our heads and most people are grotesquely unprepared to cope with it.  That was fifty years ago. These days, it seems as if change is not coming, it is here, and things are only going to get changier.  The question is, how can we come to enjoy change as an opportunity for renewal? What do we need…