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Mindfulness Practice Is the Key to Human Success

Are you familiar with Jon Kabat-Zinn? In short, he’s one of the people who has made meditation mainstream. While I generally don’t like words like ‘mainstream’ and ‘conformity’, anything that makes helpful tools more accessible to the masses is good in my book. Known as one of the creators of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Kabat-Zinn has written a bunch of books and helped teach meditation to all sorts of regular people. This article is inspired…

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I May Be Wrong, and That’s OK!

Have you ever felt like scientists were assholes? Or at least super arrogant?  I often hear scientists sound this way. And when I was in academia it seemed they surrounded me. Being an academic seemed synonymous with being so arrogant that you turned people off. I think many of us have experienced this and it does academia and science a disservice. It’s like a medical doctor with no bedside manner. If you can’t communicate with…

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Science is Not the Truth

I’ll just come out and say it. I’m sick of academic arrogance. Academic. Scientific. Intelligence mafia.  I don’t know why authority seems to be the foodstuffs of ego. But it sure seems like it is. I am so tired of being talked down to — as a society member — by those who are supposedly smarter than me. And it isn’t just the false dualism of ‘I’m smart and you’re not’. Or even that other people might know more…

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A Comprehensive Approach to Understanding Our Biosphere

Would our ancestors be proud of us? When I think of the problems humans face today: suffering, anxiety, inequality, social justice issues, war, pollution . . . I try to put things in an evolutionary context.  On the one hand, we have come so far. We have created many wonderful ‘science’, ‘technology’, and ‘engineering’ elements that benefit individuals and society. Clean water. Sanitation. Medicine.  On the other hand, it hasn’t all been rainbows and unicorns. We can’t seem…

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Personal Growth as a Model for Society

Much of our lives seem haphazard and disorganized. Sometimes doing our best simply means being able to get out of bed and go through the motions. As we gain awareness we learn how to better navigate life’s obstacles. We learn to see the obstacles as the way. It is possible – I am living proof. As my journey – specifically the work I am doing here on my podcast – evolves I go back and…

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Our Feelings Drive Interactions with Each Other

If I’ve said it once by now, I’ve said it a thousand times: It blows my mind that any two people can have a conversation and walk away feeling understood AND having understood the other person with any degree of accuracy. In other words, our communication sucks.  We often hear something other than the other person’s intent. And how often have you had a conversation and then have to have the same one AGAIN because…

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Awareness. Cultivation and Growth. (KEW Episode 121)

I’m revisiting some of my favorite concepts in this episode. Awareness. Intent. Attention. Consciousness. Will. And how these things work together and facilitate growth. Being human. Underneath all of this, I believe that growing to be a ‘better’ human is a critical requirement of being alive. Or, if it is not a requirement, it is a meaningful element whose absence is a shame if not a failure. We are all humans, subject to the distractions…

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KEW Acid Tests Questions. What Do We Want to Know?

Who Am I? Why Are We Here? What is My Purpose? Are We Living ‘Right’? Questions like this – the ‘big questions’ have been around since antiquity. It’s fun to think about when our brains reached a point in evolution where we started having luxury time. Because it’s a luxury to think. To ask these kinds of questions means we’ve already met our basic needs. At some point, we could sit down and take a…

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Would You Rather Be Right, or Happy?

Remember the last time you were at a real life impasse? It’s a cruddy feeling. Especially with someone you love. It’s frustrating to disagree. To reach a moment where you realize there’s no way to resolve the tension in the air. A simple conversation becomes conflict. We understand that the other person is NOT going to see our point of view, NOT going to change their minds, and you are NOT going to walk away…

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Epilogue KEW. The ‘Last Episode’ for now.

In the most recent Episodes I shared the capstone of my work thus far on Knowledge + Experience = Wisdom. Episodes 99 and 100 represent the culmination of the preceding 98 Episodes and 30+ interviews. The Uniqueness Imperative and the Evolution Paradox emerged, organically, from two years of podcasting and blogging on KEW and I appreciate your help elucidating those ideas. For the past couple of weeks, (May – June, 2022) I decided to write…

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