Twenty years of training and working as an Ecologist and Evolutionary Biologist means I see everything as a system of interacting parts. I really can’t see the trees for the forest. When I look at a part, I see the system to which it belongs. It’s a curse. An example is when I worked for a state environmental agency. I absolutely needed my manager to explain to me how my position fit in to the…
Man, that’s the best snippet up there. Watch it if you didn’t. It will tell you all you need to know about the type of guy David McRaney is. I’m still not sure how this happened, but David McRaney agreed to talk with me about Curiosity, and here’s over an hour of his unique viewpoints. I still refer back to several things he said during this interview. David is the host of an awesomely educational…
Inside each of us are several characters. These parts are all ‘us’, but they are distinct from one another. What distinguishes these parts is the roles they play in managing our lives. We are, at the same time, the nice guy, the responsible gal, the tactful them. We play many roles in different aspects of our lives. At work we are cordial and diligent. In bed we are adventurous and raw. As athletes we are…
With apologies to people suffering with Multiple Personality Disorders of any type, I hope I can borrow the term for the purposes of an analogy or metaphor. I have mentioned Richard Schwartz and his Internal Family Systems (IFS) work before. IFS describes our minds as naturally having multiple ‘parts’ or characters. When I say ‘multiple personalities’ this is what I mean. In the content of the Are vs Should Problem, we have to look at…
Don Miguel Ruiz, author of many books including ‘The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book)‘ uses the term “Domestication” to describe the process by which humans are taught how to live. I have been fascinated by this process, whatever you wish to call it, for as long as I can remember. In fact, I still wonder, often out loud, why no one ever asked whether or not I was…
I am borrowing the term ‘domestication’ from Don Miguel Ruiz, author of the Four Agreements. A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book). If you’ve listened to any of my podcasts you know I am very fond of the Toltecs and their way of living in our universe. But this week’s episode is specifically about the process we humans experience as we grow that essentially teaches us how to live. On the one…
In this second part of the Bully vs your DNA miniseries I describe the DNA part. I will make the argument here, which is a fundamental element of my future work on the Are vs Should Problem, that it is our birthright to express our DNA as fully as possible. I hope you enjoy. For many years I have heard things like, ‘Follow your passion!’ or, ‘if you do what you love you’ll never work…
In the second installment of this miniseries within the Are vs Should problem, I talk about the Are side of the equation. Whereas the Should part of us is an amalgamation of society’s worst elements, the Are part of us is uniquely US. I can’t wait for you to see this episode because in it I fully integrate my scientific training with my psychological and spiritual healing journey. See, for years I wrestled with the…
In this Episode I talked about how important it is for humans to feel safe. We need to feel safe in the same way that we need food, water, and shelter. Feeling unsafe is exhausting and will do whatever it takes to feel safe. Truly, we spend all of our energy trying to escape a feeling of vulnerability. If we cannot reach a state of feeling safe, we will continue to waste our precious energy…
Last week I introduced a few examples of the Are vs. Should problem. One of the most obvious examples comes up when we think about our careers. When we’re young people ask us what we want to be when we grow up. As adults, many of us wonder what became of those childhood dreams when we find ourselves doing jobs we don’t like. And I’ll argue it’s because we listen more to our Shoulds than…