Do other people ever make you angry? I’d be worried about you if you said no. Or assume you are the Dalai Lama. Many of us struggle to find connections to people we disagree with. Or people who act out, are annoying, or mean. I preach a lot about how we are all connected, and how we need to love one another and participate in our communities. But it is so very hard, sometimes, to love…
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…
Have you ever thought about your boundaries? Maybe a therapist told you your boundaries were weak. Or maybe you read something about relationships and how some people might not respect your boundaries. I learned early on that my boundaries are weak. I tend to pay attention to other people’s needs more than my own. Some people in the world will take advantage of this. Many of us struggle to simultaneously love other people while protecting our…
Do you ever feel like what you want to do goes against what society ‘wants’ you to do? Like, maybe you want to be a painter, but your parents and your school tell you that you’ll never make any money. Maybe you want to take a gap year after high school but your parents fear you’ll never go to college and, thus, never ‘amount to anything’. Maybe you are attracted to people of your same…
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…
Meditation for your middle-of-the-night worries Do you follow the weather? You know, do you check the forecast to see what it’s going to be like outside? Do you appreciate meteorologists? Or beat up on them? It probably depends on whether the forecasts are accurate. And they are accurate a lot of the time. Meteorologists go to school to learn how to be good forecasters. But most of us have zero training in predicting the future.…
You’re probably like, ‘mind control, what’s this guy talking about?’ Either he’s going to tell us how we need to get in our heads and understand what’s going on, or he’s going to talk about how the algorithm has us under its spell. It reminds me of this scene from Monsters, Inc: This week I’m taking about the first thing. Although I’m a huge fan of getting out from under the algorithms, I think that…
What do you think about when you hear the words ‘Mindfulness’ or ‘Mindset’? You might be indifferent. Many are. You might be opposed to these terms or they may induce a knee-jerk reaction, like, ‘More mumbo-jumbo hippie talk.’ Or something negative, at least. Many of you, of course, will recognize these terms but have varying familiarity with what the words really mean in practice. Funny how that is. We all think we know the meaning…
Are you self aware? We all think we are. Just like we all think we’re right, as we learned from Paul Gadola in multiple interviews. And, really, if you are taking the time to wonder whether or not you are self aware, you probably are. Our awareness is one of our greatest strengths. It’s a super power. Awareness is how we pay attention to the world around us. It is the currency we use to…
What are your thoughts on meditation? Do you think it’s some hokey mumbo-jumbo? Do you think it’s too hard to find time but that there may be something to it? Are you a regular cushion-sitter? As a human, you’re likely to fall in there somewhere. And if you are reading, listening to, or watching Knowledge + Experience = Wisdom you’re probably at least a little curious about meditation. Meditation has been called the single best…