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When you’re a workaholic, somehow all the warnings in the world don’t quite convince us that it’s time to stop.  Here’s the lie we love to tell ourselves.  There’s nothing wrong with putting in consecutive fourteen hour days if we love the work and it feels like a calling and we’re making a meaningful difference in the world, right?  May as well just keep pushing until our body gives…

Reading recovery literature taught me how to identify a martyr.  They use suffering to attract attention. They view themselves as unfortunate creatures caught in a web of circumstance. Their daily existence is a walking battleground. A montage of crises bookended by catastrophes. And so, overwhelmed with life’s problems, they quickly and easily fly into blind rage over completely inconsequential bullshit. They allow their imaginations to build small troubles into…

How do you come to respect yourself?  Does the journey call for epic achievements like scaling mountains and winning triathlons and building million dollar businesses?  Or does it come from the simple, ordinary and everyday victories you achieve in the battle of being a human being?  Faulkner once said that the only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself. Maybe that’s where respect for…

Accepting that we need to change is always first step.  But it’s not the only step. Just because we have accepted our problems doesn’t mean we can expect everything to magically fall into place.  We can’t just shake off the problem right away. We have to take our struggle in stride. We have to trust the tempo of our timing. And we have to accept that most growth and…

No matter how enlightened and accepting we think we are, inside each one of us is a judgmental axe ready to fall.  And it’s very difficult to resist.  Our ego loves judgment because it gives us a sense of being right and superior. The problem is, it doesn’t move us forward. It’s just a way of spinning our selfish wheels. Every time we spend our precious mental energy speculating…

Buddhists remind us that happiness or suffering is dependent on how we relate to the present moment.  And so, if somewhere nervously out at the periphery of our minds, we would rather belong somewhere else, that’s going to cause us pain.  The goal is to give up of all hope of alternatives to the present moment. The goal is to reach a place of enduring contentment with ourselves.  It’s…

My truest moments of community have always seemed to work in the following way.  Everybody starts by laying down their cross. Confident that their suffering is the heaviest. Convinced that they would trade places with anyone if they could. But once they take a look around, once they really feel the weight of the suffering other people have been carrying, they reach down and pick their cross right back…

They were the dream company to work for.  Everything about this consulting firm, from the people to the process to the perspective to the product, screamed my name. It was a perfect fit.  Their circus must meet my monkeys.  And so, let the courtship begin.  I started reaching out with a steady campaign of emails, proposals, social media outreach and even a few face to face interviews with internal hiring managers. …

The frustrating thing about growth is, it comes on its own terms and in its own time.  It’s realized at nature’s pace and speed, not ours.  And so, growth is less intentional and more incidental. We don’t try to grow, per se. We simply accept ourselves as we are, and then we grow automatically.  A few years ago when my left wrist injury kept me from performing locust posture, my first…

Whatever thing you’re afraid of, it’s merely an ancestor of something deeper and stronger and more human than you realize.  And if you don’t follow that fear down the chain, you’ll never uncover the truth about yourself.  Like when you’re running twenty minutes late for work and suddenly your whole body is sweating so you start power walking down the street, weaving in and out of traffic, hurdling over…