Good for you for not wasting your breath

My former coworker was telling me about his biggest irrational fear. He said that he always had terrible anxiety about not remembering people’s names. Whether he was the new student at school, the new player on a sports team, or the new employee at the company, his fear of offending others by not getting their names right struck deep. Fortunately, he told me, on his first day of work at our office, the fact that at least one person was...

After spending a year writing and performing my latest batch of songs, my wife and I spent two weeks in the Utah desert in the literal old west, filming black and white footage to bring my dark and angry sentiments to life. My forthcoming movie has no characters, no plot, no script, no sound, and no narrative arcs. Just music, words, and landscape. Full film below, and soundtrack available on Spotify. https://vimeo.com/860961752

Imagine your boss hounds you for months to stay on top of a new project. That workload consumes a nice chunk of your time and attention, causing you additional stress that normal. Then, in the eleventh hour, right before you’re about to ship something out the door, your boss suddenly decides that project is no longer a priority. Look, thanks for all the awesome work you’ve done so far, he says, but now we’re going to need you to switch...

Our society’s norm has become to instantly criticize anything that the public encounters. People have developed a zero tolerance policy for ideas that are different from their own, and so, their default response is to throw negative energy at others. If you haven’t been paying attention, here’s their strategy. Focus on what’s wrong, imply the worst, cast blame, try to control, devalue people. People actually think this works. Probably because it makes them feel better. And yet, criticism is clearly...

Buddhists teach a concept called the second arrow. It’s when a person encounters something that leads to pain, and then launches into a whole chorus of mental processes that lead to more suffering, often adding more pain than was there originally. The first arrow is our reality, like tripping over a crack in the sidewalk and face planting into dog poop. The second arrow is the sense of unworthiness we inflict upon ourselves in response to that reality, like calling...