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If you don’t believe in magic on some level, your art is going to suck. And when I say magic, I’m not referring to supernatural enthusiasms or ancient mythologies or occult practices or bewildering godspeak, rather, those moments of virtuosity and mystery and meaning, those acts of human moral beauty that provoke the kindred and start a conversation with something much larger than yourself. In short, awe. That’s what…

Identity crisis is a group effort. It may manifest in the individual, but it’s magnified by the collective. When you realize you’re done doing that which defined you, giving up a self that you have come to identify with and call our own, courageously leaving behind a world you know so well––maybe the only world you’ve ever known and felt home in––the first brand of devastation that manifests is…

Leadership isn’t about having power over others. It’s about giving people the freedom to be themselves. Inviting them to discover pieces of themselves that were lost or undernurtured, encouraging them to exploit talents they might never exercise anywhere else, allowing them to show off the luminous parts of their identity that exist beyond personality and inspiring them to becomewho they always were but had, until then, been afraid to…

I’m fascinated by the things in life that will never lie to you. Dogs and children and nature and mirrors and dumbbells and thermometers and bank accounts and human bodies, these are humanity’s greatest reference points, the givers of perspective, the beacons of truth we can always turn to. Especially in moments of uncertainty. When you’re sitting across the table from a person who can potentially hire or buy…

Sentences are my spiritual currency.  Throughout my week, I’m constantly scouring and learning and reading and annotating from any number of newspapers, blogs, online publications, books, articles, songs, art pieces, podcasts, eavesdroppings, random conversations and other sources of inspiration. Turns out, most of these sentences can be organized into about eleven different categories, aka, compartments of life that are meaningful to me. And since I enjoy being a signal tower of things…

You can’t cure loneliness with warm bodies. Only the right bodies. Joining a club or becoming part of a group or getting hired at a new company quickly buys you a baseline of belonging, but if you start to discover the organization is filled with people whose mental, physical and moral temperament is incompatible with your own, after a while, the loneliness starts to creep back in. And the…

We don’t care if you know everything. We care if you can participate in deep, thoughtful conversations about anything. That’s a completely different skill. Aninfinite game, if you will. In which you’re not playing to win, but playing to keep the game going. Where it’s less about intellectual firepower and more about curiosity and vulnerability and enthusiasm and patience and maybe even a little bit ofwow I never thought…

You can’t teach thoughtfulness. What you can do is create a system that makes thoughtfulness easier, reminds people to keep practicing it and rewards them for doing so consistently. Kahnoodle is an app that gives you points every time you do something thoughtful for your lover, like bringing home flowers, writing a sweet note or doing the dishes. You can even cash your points in for discounts at popular…

Insight isn’t as mysterious we make it out to be. The nature and origin of insightful thinking, the cognitive neuroscience that drives the insight process, not to mention the history of how artists successfully used insight to fuel innovation, are all widely documented. But here’s the part of the process we miss. Developing insight is only half the work. Delivering it is the other half. And if our job…

I used to be a board member of a small mastermind group of artists, freelancers, performers and entrepreneurs. Once a quarter, we gathered for a weekend retreat. The agenda was to give updates, share news, disclose struggles, offer feedback, solve problems and of course, make tons of inappropriate jokes. And I was always blown away at the quality of people’s insights. During our meetings, tears were shed, gasps were…