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Fear has a lot of shady disguises.  It often masquerades as the voice of wisdom and reason. Tricking us into believing that we’re in greater danger than we really are, and we better back away from taking any risks.  It’s so hard not to listen. But the thing fear doesn’t want us to know is, it has limited stamina. It may be fast off the starting blocks, but it…

Fear has its place in reality.  It’s there for a reason. It’s one of those useful evolutionary mechanisms that aids us in our survival.  Of course, most of the time, whatever we’re anxious about is out of proportion to the reality of the danger we fear. In fact, living with that fear is often more painful than the event itself.  It just feels scarier in the moment because the…

We’re all attached to our own stories.  Hardened to our limited ways of operating in the world. Habituated to the way the landscape looks from there. And we hug those stories like a comfort blanket. To the point that we can’t imagine living without them.  That’s the natural tendency of the human mind. It wants us to stay within the security of the rigid patterns it already set up….

What if hikers wore anti spider web hats?  What if we used blockchain to make tables less wobbly?  What if sex dolls kept guests company at parties?  What if drones collected data from pet poop?  What if stores used logo branded mice to eliminate insects? In this episode of Steal Scott’s Ideas, Tom, Adam & Brian gather in St. Louis for some execution in public. **Sponsored by Aperture Execution Lesson…

The space program once conducted a fascinating study on the effect of prolonged space flight on human skeletal muscle.  Researchers took calf muscle biopsies of crew members before and after their trip aboard the international space station.  Here’s what they found.  Even when crew members did aerobic exercise five hours a week and resistance exercise three to six days per week, muscle volume and peak power both still decreased significantly.  Because…

Gratitude is the quickest, cheapest and most effective intervention for anxiety, fear and toxic thinking.  Anytime we can stop the negativity stream and introduce a moment of appreciation, it creates a small wedge of space that interrupts our racing brain. And it helps us cope with life’s difficult and scary experiences.  Not by fighting them. Not by running away from them. But by changing our relationship to them.  Like…

In the academic world, the peer review process is extremely strict.  Submissions must meet the high quality standards that have been established by the journal in order to be approved for publication.  According to a professor friend of mine, one of the most challenging guidelines for writers is to make sure their work isn’t incremental. That’s the classification academia uses to describe any work that fails to convincingly add new and…

During a recent interview, one of my favorite writers made a genius insight about the arc of a career.  It’s a short life, and if you keep repeating your success, you’re going to make it even shorter. Because you’ll be living your life in years, not sections.  His words are a dark and powerful reminder that if we want to make the most of our limited time on this…

Tippett once wrote that the reason problems seem overwhelming is because we’re using the wrong tools to understand them.  That’s the real problem. We were trained in society that tension exists to be resolved.  I will fix this somehow by taking radical action, we announce to ourselves.  And yet, it might be one of those situations in life that asks us to enter our way into the problem and just feel its pain….

Allowing myself to admit what I desire, getting in touch with the small things that matter to me, these aren’t insignificant moments.  They’re triumphs of the self. Exercises in meaning.  Like singing karaoke on the commute to work every morning, for example. That’s an act of joy that helps me feel a sense of delight and blissful expansiveness in my body. It’s my emotional on ramp to the workday. …