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Accepting and loving and forgiving and being kind to ourselves isn’t a personal development exercise, it’s a sacred responsibility. And we must take it seriously.  Because we can’t guarantee that anyone else will do it for us. We have to write our own ticket. Otherwise disappointment and bitterness awaits us.  Dodinksy was right when he said, no amount of love from others is sufficient to fill the yearning that…

There’s no shame in being meticulous.  Being organized doesn’t kill our creative urge and destroy our street cred and ruin our chances of making it as artists.  Being apathetic, cynical, disaffected and too cool to care, does.  If we want success to have a real chance at us, we have to puncture some our own pretensions. We have to shatter the myths that we’ve developed from watching television. And we…

We all have to capacity to be scandalized by our own inner thoughts.  Humans, after all, are suckers for their feelings. Our emotions are so completely convincing to us. And until we gain a greater understanding of our own mental operating system, we will be easily swayed by our own opinions.  The challenge, then, is learning how to stand up to the internal thugs who try to derail our…

Most customer service, isn’t.  It’s just a convincing facade of tenderness and compassion. A plausible facsimile of care. An insincere illusion of warmth expressed through repetitive, predictable and joyless pre approved scripts, performed over and over again.  And it breaks my heart, but at the same time, can you blame them? Can you honestly fault the employees for having an apathetic attitude towards their company, their products and their customers?  Of course…

When other people’s behavior does not support our identity, our instinct is to believe that they’re either wrong, crazy, or both. Our judgmental axe is always ready to fall.  But we have to remember, it’s not about us. It’s rarely about us. In fact, if we knew just how infrequently other people’s behaviors ever had anything to do with us, we would be astonished.  Because when somebody cuts us…

Even when I’m watching people make foolhardy and potentially dangerous decisions, I resist the temptation to intervene and vomit my wisdom and experience all over them.  Because that rarely improves the situation. Turns out, when you take responsibility away from people, you steal their choices. When you steal people’s choices, you rob them of the dignity of their own experience. And when you rob them of the dignity of…

Comparing ourselves with others is a futile game with no winners.  Because everybody’s working with a different path. And there are so many differences and nuances in people’s journeys, that to even begin to make an objective comparison is an exercise in futility.  That’s like comparing apples to plywood.  Besides, what’s going on in other people’s world in none of our business. It’s just an ego vortex that sucks…

If we’re just a collection of mirrors reflecting what everyone else expects of us, then our dreams will find themselves reduced to a mere parenthesis.  But once we’re not dying to be accepted anymore, and once we don’t have to pretend to be fearless anymore, we can finally trust that being ourselves will be enough to get the love we need.  It’s goddamn liberating. Not to mention, significantly lower…

More than a century ago, the futurist manifesto talked about the joy of seeing the glorious old canvasses bobbing adrift on the waters, discolored and shredded.  It’s both a poetic and practical reminder than if we want to propel our creative lives forward, we have to find new ways to express ourselves. We have to go in search of new canvasses, quite literally, that allow us to surge forth with a…

I was recently selected to sit on the jury for a civil trial.  During the case preparation, the lead attorney gave all of the jurors a communication tip that I though was interesting. He said, jurors should never say, you never asked me that, at the end of a trial.  Because the selection process all about fairness and impartiality. And if the case is about to close, and the attorney…