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Marathoners know they can’t develop stamina by taking walks in the park.  It may be good for their health, and it may be an enjoyable way to spend the afternoon, but it’s not a sufficiently rigorous enough activity to move their story forward.  The only real way to build the strength of their physical constitution is by ratcheting up the intensity. By extending their practice level on an incremental…

Henri taught his painting students that the artist’s life was one long investigation of things and their reactions to them.  This is an exquisite description of the creative process. But it’s also an interesting filter for witnessing our growth in general.  Because our reactions are the barometers of our evolution. They are what define us, for better or for worse. In some moments, we sabotage ourselves by reacting in ways that…

There’s a saying in the recovery movement that addicts are like pickles, they can never become cucumbers again.  It’s a humble reminder that any of us, addicts or not, can easily relapse into a former unhealthy definition of ourselves that no longer holds true.  No matter how far we have come in our growth, there are certain mindsets we can never fully remove or heal or fix or cure….

Few things are more important than owning our choices and defining happiness for ourselves.  And yet, we live in a world where people go to great lengths to fulfill urges and desires they don’t even question. Where obligations are needlessly accepted out of vanity. And where people get dragged along in dangerous currents, swept inexorably towards decisions that could potentially destroy them.  To me, this means our ability to…

My mentor once told me that reputation always catches up with us, either to pat us on the back or kick us in the ass.  This is a helpful and hopeful mantra to invoke as we watch various sociopaths, assholes and idiots taking advantage of others, treating people cruelly and thinking they will somehow get away with it.  They won’t. Not like they used to.  That’s the advantage of…

Few words have more emotional and intellectual and range than why.  On the simpler end of the spectrum, children ask the question why a dozen times every day.  Their curiosity about the world around them helps build concepts, skills and vocabulary. Asking why is their vehicle on the quest to understand the world they live in. Even if it drives their poor sleep deprived parents crazy.  On the more…

In a group setting, certain personality types can be annoying, exhausting and disruptive to the collective energy of the room.  Consider how many times you were stuck in a meeting with a person who did one of the following.  Speaks way longer than they should, lacks sensitivity to nonverbal cues, provides unnecessary or redundant elaboration, makes excessive contributions that draw attention away from the task, believes that other group…

Change is hard for all of us, myself included. In this new series, I’ll be sharing daily mediations on transition, change, reinvention. Look out all you rock and rollers, turn and face the strange.     # # #  Seigel wrote that response flexibility is the habit that enables us put a temporal and mental space between stimulus and response, and between impulse and action.  His psychology research showed that…

Change is hard for all of us, myself included. In this new series, I’ll be sharing daily mediations on transition, change, reinvention. Look out all you rock and rollers, turn and face the strange.     # # #  Here’s a common fear when life suddenly changes and throws us off our routine.  What if I have become so conditioned that I won’t be able to function anywhere else?  It…

Change is hard for all of us, myself included. In this new series, I’ll be sharing daily mediations on transition, change, reinvention. Look out all you rock and rollers, turn and face the strange.     # # #  If desiring to change was enough, then we would have already changed by now.  Turns out, however, wanting to feel better is not the same as willingness to change.  Because everyone…