Category: Archives

The full collection of explorations.

Living With Ease 101

Published on September 13, 2024

Man. It can be tempting to just throw your hands into the air, curse your circumstances, and blame everyone and the world for not teaching you this or preparing you for that.

Anxiety. Addiction. Discipline. Depression. Relationships. Kids. Property. Taxes. Insurance. Medications. Death. Disease. Loneliness… Each curveball feels like it comes with avengeance, always from new angles, and only with increased intensity.

And you know what?

Nobody is coming to change that.

Nobody is coming to save you.

Nobody is coming to knock on your door and offer you the Living With Ease 101 Guidebook.

And while this might sound grim or deflating… you know what?

At least it will get you out of the mindset of waiting.

Because too many of us are waiting for somebody to come along and do exactly those things… change our frustrating circumstances for the better… save us from curveballs of life… knock on our door and give us the answers to all of our current problems.

The sooner we can acknowledge that we’re waiting to be saved… the sooner we can snap out of it and begin saving ourselves.

Because while, sure, you hopefully have people in your life who are helping you out… ultimately, they have their own curveballs to figure out. And waiting for them to figure out theirs and then figure out yours, too, isn’t a good long-term strategy.

The long-term strategy that works is taking ownership, taking action, learning from errors, and repeating forever onward.

It’ll take just as much time as waiting.

…And return a helluva lot more on your time invested.

Your Dream?

Published on September 12, 2024

What is your dream and where does it come from?

…Does it come from your parents?

…Does it come from your associates/friends?

…Does it come from your social media feeds?

…Does it come from jealousy or resentment?

…Does it come from a feeling of lack or unworthiness?

…Does it come from insights as to what makes you feel alive?

…Does it come deeply and authentically, from you?

Most people’s dreams are infiltrated with ideas that actually aren’t in alignment with their innermost self’s ideas.

…And if you never sit with the question and do some honest inner work, you’ll never know which ideas are whose.

Spontaneous Self-Expression

Published on September 11, 2024

Spontaneous self-expression should be honored as one of the most sacred human experiences we can witness and offer in life.

Be it through quirky or carefree dance, uncontrollable laughter, art of any kind, intimate and/or vulnerable conversation, potent emotional arises… these are the moments when we both truly remember a person and are truly remembered. These are the moments we record into our memory banks that allow us to recall the feeling and image of a person on demand. These are the moments when we/they are truly alive and most impressively connected to the present moment—despite all of the distractions, brainwashing, and suffering that’s constantly trying to yank us away.

It’s a rare and sacred moment both for you and another to experience. Recognize that and honor it for what it is. Surround yourself with more people and in more places where this is the vibe. And don’t ever be that person that kills another person’s spontaneous vibe.

Never “T-Word”

Published on September 10, 2024

My martial arts students and I have an ongoing joke where we, “never use the t-word in class”: tired.

The idea behind it is a classic martial one: our mind will always give up before our body. And so if we can discipline our mind (to push through tired, pain, and fatigue), we’ll be able to better push our body (outside of their comfort zones and into zones of growth).

It’s important, however, not to carry this mentality with you 100% of the time and to, contradictorily, “never use the t-word” only some of the time.

Stepping onto the mats for a martial arts class is a great time to embody this mindset.

When you’re getting ready for bed, not so much.

It’s mindfulness that you should carry with you 100% of the time.

This can be tricky to explain because if you’re not careful, mindfulness can unknowingly turn into mindlessness.

When we’re mindful, we’re intimately in tune with our physiological state. We know when we actually need to rest and when we actually need to push.

When we’re in tune with our ego, however, we start to make mindless decisions—such as skipping workouts because we’re feeling lazy or using long days as an excuse to eat poorly or letting screen time infiltrate our schedules and take over higher priority tasks.

The post-task feeling meditation can help clear things up.

Simply imagine how you’re feeling at the end of a designated task—do you regret doing it (because your exhaustion levels were exacerbated and are truly going to effect the rest of your day/week) or are you glad you did it (because you beat the schemes of the ego)?

IRL Initiators

Published on September 9, 2024

The person who initiates in-person, human-to-human gatherings plays a more important role than ever before in modern society.

Why? Because screens are capturing the best of our attention each day and are leaving us with less and less to give to IRL meetups—especially as algorithms, AI, and technology advance to make screens more and more addicting.

By the time we’re done with work or have a space in our schedule when we’re actually able to hang out with people, in-person… we’re exhausted. Or are more tempted by the easy access to screen dopamine than the resistance we might face when thinking about arranging IRL meetups.

I can feel it in myself: a hesitation; a laziness; a doubt; a distraction; a weight; a series of excuses; an expectation; an easier option—when I think about initiating IRL meetups.

And the crazy part is… I know I’m blessed with a circle of close connections who would love to meetup IRL and would laugh at the thoughts of:

“Well, I have to get my house perfectly clean before I invite them over.”
“I don’t want to set anything up until I know everybody vibes well together.”
“They’re probably as exhausted as I am and would rather chill at home than meet up.”

But, I suspect I’m not the only one…

What we need are people who can be proactive. People who can make arrangements, make the calls, discipline themselves with their screens, trash the excuses, and stick to their word.

There used to be a time when this was all there was.

Now… it’s a skill that needs to be built.

…Will you help fill the need for this ever important role?

“Less Comparing; More Dancing”

Published on September 8, 2024

…That was the message I settled on after taking a 90 minute, Meet Your Higher Self Workshop at Burning Man.

The workshop started with guided group discussions around Higher Self and what that even means. We shared ideas, did visualizations, talked about our greatest dreams, our greatest fears, and discussed how each of us are messengers who, by embodying all that is our Higher Self, get to communicate a specific message to the world.

And the ultimate prompt that lead to my above message was, “What’s the message that you’re carrying into the world?”

By “less comparing” I mean do everything in your power to reduce the amount of time you spend exposing yourself to people, places, and things that exacerbate your instinct to judge and make you dwell on all that’s better in others and worse in yourself. Particularly, less media featuring distorted perceptions of beauty, success, and happiness—and less time with people and in places where comparison is hyper prevalent.

By “more dancing” I don’t necessarily mean just more dancing—although dancing is one of the closest examples I could think of to express this next sentiment. What I ultimately mean is more time spent in moments of uninhibited self-expression. Uninhibited as in ego-less; without a care for what others think; done purely for the sake of celebrating a moment of being alive. And for me, spontaneous dancing is the complete embodiment of that. And it’s something we need more of it in this world.

This is the message I hope to carry into the world.

Now I pass the question off to you… What’s your message?

The Frustrated Eye

Published on September 7, 2024

While I was away at Burning Man, my email service provider (who sends out these daily emails) retired their services.

…Of course.

And so when I got back, not only did I have to unpack, reintegrate into daily living, and make sense of the other-worldly experience that was/is Burning Man… but I also had to find a new email service provider, migrate all of my subscribers over to them, redraft all of my email templates and rss feed settings from scratch, rebuild all of my email capture forms and popups, and create new automation flows.

…Not exactly good timing when there’s a million other things to do after coming back from vacation.

But, with that challenge came an opportunity that I had been procrastinating for a long time.

My old email service provider wasn’t really keeping themselves up-to-date with the times. They had a service that worked, kept it minimal, and trucked forward for almost 10 years without changing much along the way.

And while it worked just fine for me, it was definitely time for a refresh.

And that’s what coming home to this challenge gave me the opportunity to do… refresh what I had been stubbornly refusing to do for so long.

Worth thinking about for yourself: what challenge are you facing in your life and where’s the opportunity in that challenge?

In the heat of the moment it can feel like there absolutely isn’t one—and the only presiding thoughts and emotions are all geared towards “the bad” and the inconveniences of the circumstance.

…But with a calm and collected mind, you just might find there’s more to your life’s challenges than what meets the frustrated eye.