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Within the interpersonal realm, surrender is the willingness to leave our position to join the other.  To make the empathetic leap and see things from somebody else’s perspective.  But in the intrapersonal realm, meaning, that which goes on exclusively within our own minds and hearts, surrendering means something different. It’s the willingness to leave our ego and join the only reality there is.  And make no mistake, this is…

Age and ambition have a complicated relationship.  There are certain people who, as they get older, will stop dreaming, period.  Others will put their dreams in a box so they never spoil.  While others will actively kill their dreams out of fear or guilt.  And my personal favorite, the people who do dream big, but have literally zero intention of ever even beginning to lay the groundwork for making…

People leave your life sometimes.  Not by dying, necessarily. They just go away. And it isn’t a thing you can control or predict. All you can do is react. Reminds me of my favorite coming of age movie. Gordy says of his two best friends from middle school: As time went on, we saw less and less of each other, until eventually we became just two more faces in the…

Shawshank is my favorite movie of all time. It was a film about institutionalizing people.  Not only physically within the walls of the jail, but also mentally and emotionally and psychologically. Inside their own heads and hearts.  Brooks, the elderly prison librarian, finally finds out that his parole is up after fifty years. But his first response is to grab a fellow inmate in a chokehold and put a…

Cults are scary because they suck you in, but also because they don’t let you leave.  There is simply too much psychological pressure.  Members can’t just come and go as they please. People are strongly encouraged, and often times physically forced, to be committed and obey the rigid rules of conduct.  It’s like that aggressive store owner who doesn’t let you leave without buying something. Or when you go…

Seneca once wrote that the greatest peril of misplaced worry is that in keeping us constantly tensed against an imagined catastrophe, it prevents us from fully living.  Perhaps it’s time we found a better place for that worry.  To make the mental railroad switch, so to speak.  Because even though it’s toxic energy, it’s still energy. Which means it can be channeled in a productive manner.  Ellis tells his patients to…

The older we get, the trickier friendships become. After a certain age, our schedules become more compressed, our priorities become more focused, our energies become more limited, our filters become more discerning and our values become more secure.  Meaning, there is a finite number of new relationships we have room for.  And so, we have to learn to approach our relationships with a sense of acceptance and trust.  A…

There’s a difference been adaptation and evolution.  Adaptation is a specific process of adjusting ourselves to become better suited to our environment. It’s undergoing modification to fit our new circumstances.  Evolution, however, is a broader term that refers to any change in anything over time. It’s the gradual development of something from a simple to a more complex form.  But the two ideas work hand in hand. Despite their…

The was a famous legislation passed in the seventies that provided enforcement for something called a satisfaction guarantee warranty.  After all, the customer is always right. This act stipulated that businesses would have to refund the full purchase price regardless of the reason for dissatisfaction.  Carlin famously named this the advertising lullaby, meaning, the whole purpose of marketing is to lull consumers to sleep. And it may have been…

The four most liberating words in any language are: Not my problem anymore.  Like the entrepreneur who sells his company, but still gets phone calls from old customers who have complaints about their products. Not my problem anymore.  Or the longtime board member who resigns from her volunteer role, but still gets emails about mundane issues that need voting on. Not my problem anymore.  What about the property owner…