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I have a curious constitution.  I am vitalized by the world of ideas and turned on by brilliance. I am hungry for insight into the nature of things. I am obsessed with finding wisdom from unexpected sources. I love the thrill of finding a pattern beneath life’s complexities. I relish the process of interrogating information and sniffing for kernels.  I enjoy using curiosity to disrupt my own point of…

When companies are sinking into the financial mire, consultants pull them out.  But only if they allow them to.  That’s the astonishing part. Because the founders of these organizations, who are typically wealthy, successful, high achieving white males over the age of fifty, are rarely willing to admit the company has a problem.  That’s why they pay consultants handsomely to build up the facade of an enterprise that deep down, they…

If our greatest asset is the willingness to acknowledge what isn’t working, then our greatest action is to seek help, in whatever necessary form, to keep moving the story forward.  Regardless of how uncomfortable it might be to hold out our hands and receive it, regardless how stubborn we are about succeeding on our own steam without help, and regardless of how secure self reliance seems when the only…

The work is its own reward.  To look beyond that is foolish.  If you can get paid for the art you make, that’s great. If you can build a career out of it, that’s a miracle.  But any remuneration that you think will set you free and make the slog worthwhile, it’s just stardust. It evaporates the moment you touch it.  All that matters is the process. The journey….

Next month, Ixia Press is releasing my new book, 365 Daily Meditations for On and Off the Mat: A Year in Hot Yoga.  Here is an interview I did on their website to talk about my yoga journey, the publishing process and of course, sweat angel competitions. DP: I see a commonality in your TEDx talk and your book: you provide an insight or meditation and then ask the audience a…

Lewis was more than a professional critic, but also a prolific corresponder.  More than twenty years after his death, his foundation published an anthology of letters written to family, friends, and fans, spanning from his youth as a student to just a few weeks before his death.  In one particular letter from the mid fifties, he wrote the following.  The pleasure of pride is like the pleasure of scratching. If there…

Seuss famously wrote a graduation speech in the form of a book to address the ups and downs of life.  You’ll come down from the lurch with an unpleasant bump. The chances are, then, that you’ll be in a slump. And when you’re in a slump, you’re not in for much fun. Unslumping yourself is not easily done.  That’s for damn sure. Because when you’re slumping, it’s difficult to…

I was listening to an interview with the highest paid supermodel of all time.  Crawford’s thirty years of success at modeling made her an international icon, and so, it was no surprise that she was savvy enough to impart the following piece of advice.  This business will use you, so you better use it back.  That’s the story we’re afraid to tell ourselves when we enter into the professional arena.  That knowing we’re…

For thousands of years, we’ve been brainwashed into believing that we should be afraid of our desires.  Thanks to the powers that be, humans have lived in fear that desire would lead them into dark, objectionable, indulgent and shameful places.  Consider the origin of the word.  Desire literally translates to mean lustful. It’s one of the seven deadly sins. It’s a capital vice. Dante even depicted it as the first circle…

The viewpoint that it’s all bullshit, that we’re all powerless to do anything and that everything in this world subject to some absurd and inevitable predetermination, that’s not wisdom, that’s defeatism.  It’s a lazy response to life. A luxury. The weak way out of things. Needless negative thinking that only empowers the problem.  Yes, it’s more interesting and clever to proclaim that it’s all bullshit.  Yes, it’s liberating to…