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Category: Archives

The full collection of explorations.

8 Hours Of Cleaning

I spent about 8 hours cleaning, organizing, and preparing my house for 2026 today.

Two observations as I reflect on it:

1. Chain tasks together. Going one task to the next to the next is always easier than doing one task, stopping, and trying to start back up again. This is as true for cleaning as it is for productivity at work as it is for personal development.

2. Prepare your environment in a way that makes getting the things you gotta/wanna get done easier. Keep your workout area clean, have your workout clothes ready, write down your workout the night before, make sure the equipment you need is prepared and organized, and so on. Also: hide the bad foods in the kitchen, keep a fruit bowl out (and filled), meal plan, have healthy cravings alternatives for when you need something sweet/salty, etc.

Getting everything done that I got done today felt incredible.

If you haven’t prepped your environment like this in a while, it’d be an excellent thing to consider at the outset of 2026.

Music > Podcasts?

There was a time when I was very much podcasts > music. The thought being, if you have the time to listen to something, why not make it something “productive” that can help you gain valuable insight and possibly help you improve your life?

But then I hit a point of saturation where too much of a good thing was flooding my mind. And I realized that what I needed wasn’t more time devoted to productive self-improvement (which is a large part of how I spend my time professionally)… what I needed was more time to let my mind… breathe.

And I am now very much in my music > podcast era.

Because what I learned is that space is just as important as what fills it. Too much stuff in your house, for example, and no space to move isn’t a good thing—more space would be… Nor would too much exercise and not enough rest be—rest is when the body rebuilds and recovers itself… Or when you think about how awful too much work and not enough play feels… the beauty is in the balance.

There’s nothing wrong with podcasts.

It’s simply to say: give your mind/body space to breathe from whatever is heavily saturating it/them.

Maybe even something to cheers to for 2026?

Post Show Depression

After a really good music show, some describe the feeling after as a crash—a drastic come down back to reality—even as post show depression.

Because when you’re at a really good music show, you’re not attached to reality as you know it. You’re somewhere else. Somewhere transported, somewhere high above, somewhere freeing and loved filled…

But as I heard someone describe it today… it doesn’t have to be a crash followed by depression… it can be something we gracefully carry back down with us and intentionally integrate into our reality as we now know it.

Because being at a really good music show isn’t a detachment from reality—it is reality. And what’s happening there can happen elsewhere, too. We just have to learn how to carry that updated understanding of reality with us.

Trust And Surrender

While at a music show last night, a distressed women crossed paths with a group of friends and I.

After calming her down, we gathered that she lost her friend group and was freaking out because it had been over an hour and there were quite literally thousands of people there… which meant poor (read: no) phone reception… constant changes and shuffles in the waves of people… and to make things worse for her, I don’t think she was even five feet tall—so she was surrounded by walls of people at every turn.

What happened next, though, was pretty incredible.

We created a space for her to calm down… where she could feel safe in the sea of strangers… where she could dance a little of the anxiety away…

And quite literally the moment after I finished saying, “Sometimes this is what happens and you have to just lean into the side quest, and just trust that it will all work out…” she looked back over my shoulder and finds her friend group.

And she started sobbing.

And we all started celebrating.

And we all had a sunshine and rainbows universe alignment moment.

…Had she continued on the distressed, anxiety-ridden path she was on, she would’ve continued in the exact opposite direction of where her friends were. Us creating that space for her got her to turn around and realign with a better path.

And as it usually does… the universe delivered a memory, a lesson, and a remarkable moment all wrapped into one.

Sometimes, as hard as it might be, we just have to learn to trust and surrender.

Wobbly Tables

Before sitting down to eat brunch this morning, the waitress asked me if I could get the wedge off the picture frame.

I had no idea what she was asking me at first but I soon realized she was using it to level the tables my friends and I were sitting at, which, she explained to me, she had hidden all over the restaurant…

…It took a total of 30 seconds to get it right and it saved us probably 30 minutes of irritation and complaint about having wobbly tables.

When you’re in the service industry, details matter. But you know what? Details matter just about everywhere else, too.

Being In Philadelphia

Yesterday I drove from Buffalo, NY to Philadelphia, PA.

The drive was supposed to take six hours. But, because of weather, it took close to eleven.

That’s not only a lot of time to be driving, but it’s a lot of time to be with yourself.

And what I kept telling myself is that it was as good of a time as any to enjoy just being… and that being in Philadelphia wasn’t a better place to be than wherever I was on the road.

So I kept the music on loud… held a steady presence focused on the elements on the road… and tried to relax into my mind.

Sometimes singing came up… sometimes it was dancing… and sometimes it was inner work type thoughts. I welcomed it all. I fought none of it. And I arrived right when I was supposed to.

The Pulsing Cries From Within

Why are some of the most popular classes I teach the ones that I announce are going to be the hardest?

I’ll tell you why: it’s because deep down, underneath all of the noise of the mind, many of us want to do hard things so that we can become great.

On a day-to-day basis, however, it’s the noise of the mind that usually wins over our attention and subsequent actions—and we stay within the realm of what’s comfortable, usual, and easy.

But, of course, that leaves us feeling unchallenged, underwhelmed, and unfulfilled.

Lead too many of those days in a row and it becomes an aching feeling that swells.

…Until eventually it grows to the point where it’s too hard to ignore or muffle under the general noise of the mind—which is what usually works—and we start to hear the pulsing cries from within.

“There’s got to be more to life than this…”

“Is this really all that I’m here to do…?”

“What will people remember about me when I’m gone?”

…And we resolve to step it up a little bit. To push ourselves a little bit more. To uncover a little more of the potential we have inside.

And the best way to do that, our spirit whispers to us from deep within, is to voluntarily do hard things.