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The emotional and psychological burden of having to think about certain things can be very high. Which doesn’t mean those things are not worth thinking about at all, but we do our nervous system a disservice when we psychologically tie ourselves to more things than are necessary. Isn’t life already burdensome enough? Why not free ourselves from these albatrosses that keep flying after us everywhere we go? Here, let…

Blood simple is when criminals lose control of full rationality at the moment of committing the crime and inevitably leave incriminating clues behind. As a result, the consequences of their acts quickly swirl out of control, and everything goes to hell. Coens made their debut movie about this phenomenon in the eighties. It makes for a compelling plot line. But what’s interesting about the film is, you don’t have…

People pleasing is a learned behavior. Most of us were trained from a very young age, by parents, teachers, coaches and other authority figures, to either meet people’s expectations, or follow our own essential desires and suffer the consequences. This behavior served us well when we were children. It kept us safe and helped us grow. However, as adults, the disease to please can have the opposite effect. Think…

Here is a short quiz to gauge what your relationship with temptation is. *Do you have trouble stopping something once you’ve started? *Is it easier for you to give something up altogether than to indulge moderately? *Do you feel peace and gratitude at the thought of never having to get or do something? *Do you loathe spending your precious energy justifying why you should go ahead and indulge? If…

Siri, the virtual assistant that answers questions, makes recommendations, and performs internet enabled actions, knows how to read your mind. If you tell her you have a headache, she’ll respond by saying that she’s found three drugstores not far from you, where you can buy aspirin. Actually, my favorite conspiracy theory claims the assistant will intentionally select drug stores that are a few miles down the road, knowing that…

My former coworker was telling me about his biggest irrational fear. He said that he always had terrible anxiety about not remembering people’s names. Whether he was the new student at school, the new player on a sports team, or the new employee at the company, his fear of offending others by not getting their names right struck deep. Fortunately, he told me, on his first day of work…

After spending a year writing and performing my latest batch of songs, my wife and I spent two weeks in the Utah desert in the literal old west, filming black and white footage to bring my dark and angry sentiments to life. My forthcoming movie has no characters, no plot, no script, no sound, and no narrative arcs. Just music, words, and landscape. Full film below, and soundtrack available…

Imagine your boss hounds you for months to stay on top of a new project. That workload consumes a nice chunk of your time and attention, causing you additional stress that normal. Then, in the eleventh hour, right before you’re about to ship something out the door, your boss suddenly decides that project is no longer a priority. Look, thanks for all the awesome work you’ve done so far,…

Our society’s norm has become to instantly criticize anything that the public encounters. People have developed a zero tolerance policy for ideas that are different from their own, and so, their default response is to throw negative energy at others. If you haven’t been paying attention, here’s their strategy. Focus on what’s wrong, imply the worst, cast blame, try to control, devalue people. People actually think this works. Probably…

Buddhists teach a concept called the second arrow. It’s when a person encounters something that leads to pain, and then launches into a whole chorus of mental processes that lead to more suffering, often adding more pain than was there originally. The first arrow is our reality, like tripping over a crack in the sidewalk and face planting into dog poop. The second arrow is the sense of unworthiness…