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Category: Archives

The full collection of explorations.

Who Should I Think About As I Write?

Published on June 3, 2026

If I think too much about who’s on my email list, I have a really hard time settling on a topic.

Should I write for the parents?

Should I lean more towards business casual or drinking buddy language?

Should I bear in mind the people I’ve met through martial arts or music or social media or education or travel?

But then I come back to my mission statement: I help busy people do inner work.

…And I can focus again. Because I’m not writing for any one person on my list. In fact, I’m not even writing for the entirety of the people on my list.

…I’m writing for me. Because I’m busy. And I need to keep finding ways to do inner work.

Because I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: daily writing that’s inner work based is one of the best things I’ve ever done for my mental health, healing, and personal growth.

And if I can help some of the other busy people out there via the work I’m doing for myself… or help them build a practice that’ll guide them forward in the same way my practice has guided me… then that’s a pretty incredible bonus.

What Is A Celebration Of Life?

Published on May 30, 2026

…It’s an event where people come together and celebrate—in a way most appropriate for the person—a life lived.

We celebrate this life because it’s a miracle it ever even happened—against odds in the trillions to one ballpark (that’s trillions with a “t”). We celebrate this life because of the impact it had on ours—one that helped shape our character and identity as we know it, in both the biggest and tiniest of ways. We celebrate this life because of the impact it had on others—an impact which likely rippled further out into the world than they or we could ever truly know.

And yes, we mourn the loss because the above has come to an end.

…But, does it though?

What if the celebration of life event is an exercise in keeping the person’s impact alive?

What if we could carry the best of that person’s legacy with us and continue to ripple it forward into the lives of others?

What if the person we lost was a byproduct of hundreds of thousands of people’s legacies who came before… all totaling up to the person we loved so dearly?

And what if by celebrating them not only at the event, but regularly, you’re helping total up the character and identity of those around into something millions of others will eventually come to appreciate and love so dearly?

Life Is Unfair?

Published on May 28, 2026

Do you realize that, in an incalculable number of ways, you’re living a life of already answered prayers?

Think about it.

How many times were you terribly sick and prayed for health?

How many times have you feared for your life and saw things through to the other side?

How many times have you prayed for good news and gotten it?

How many times was a deal made where if the universe/higher power delivered “A,” you would offer back, “B”—and the universe delivered?

How many times have you prayed for a person? To heal? To find their way? To like you? And it came true?

…And how many times have we immediately moved on with our lives after an answered prayer… filling the universe only with multiplied additional prayers rather than even an ounce of gratitude?

Maybe one of the reasons we feel like life is unfair, is because for every one answered prayer, we ask for ten additional prayers to be answered… and we quickly forget about all that has already been fulfilled.

…But if you flipped that formula, and responded with 10 times the gratitude for every one answered prayer, maybe life being unfair wouldn’t be so bad after all.

…Now What?

Published on May 28, 2026

Dear busy person,

A colleague and friend of mine just found out he has 6 months to 2 years to live.

This news could’ve just as easily been given to you.

…It could actually be beneficial for you to imagine it was.

Close your eyes. Visualize yourself in a doctor’s office after getting tests done the previous week. Today is results day. The doctor comes in and gets right to the point—no small talk. The above is the situation. And it’s said plainly and as a matter of fact. He says he’s sorry and walks out.

…What exactly were you so busy doing again?

…What was it that you were complaining about again?

…What important thing(s) did you say you were going to wait until later to do again?

The thought of death gives us the urgency to really live—whatever that means to you.

But when we bury death as an abstract, foreign concept into the deep, dark corners of our mind—we lose that urgency, don’t we?

Maybe it’s time we resurface it. Maybe it’s time we think about it again. Maybe today is a good day to imagine we only have 6 months left to live.

…Now what?

Intentional Space

Published on May 27, 2026

One of the reasons my work office got so cluttered and messy was because there were so many things that didn’t have a “home.”

I would be given beautiful cards, thoughtful gifts, art pieces, timeless pictures, and sentimental trinkets… and I would have to shove them into one of the limited places I had any open space at all.

And having worked in the same martial arts school for 20+ years… you can only imagine the amount of stuff I had crammed around.

One of my major goals this past weekend, when renovating and redesigning my work office was to give everything an intentional space—both for the things I was already given, and the things that would come.

I spent hours and hours going through it all, organizing it, imagining the appropriate space for it, shopping for the right pieces, and building/designing it—with my sister’s help, of course.

And it turned out beautifully. I’m very proud of the space and feel not only lighter from having removed all of the clutter and mess, but more joyful because so much of what was buried in a tiny drawer is now being featured on the walls and has space to breathe.

A bunch of a good thing shoved into a tiny drawer doesn’t do you or anybody else any good. And sometimes, that’s what’s making us feel bad—whether consciously or not. And all we have to do is give all of the amazingly good things we’ve already been given a home where we can see it, feel it, and experience it on a regular basis—rather than just always wishing for more and more.

Nobody Is Coming To Push You

Published on May 21, 2026

You don’t get amazing people into your life via boring living.

You attract amazing people into your life via exciting living.

And I don’t mean this by anyone else’s definition of “boring” or “exciting” than yours.

You know when you’re living well within your comfort zone, as your unrealized self, doing nothing but consuming behind closed doors.

And equally so, you know when you’re living outside of your comfort zone, as your evolving self, creating and sharing and connecting in the vast landscapes of the world.

The thing is, people want somebody amazing to come into their life to push them into that “exciting” lifestyle. But what we have to realize is, nobody is coming to push us… we have to start living our most exciting lifestyle and, by and by, we’ll attract—we’ll pull—amazing people in.

Not because they saw somebody living in a boring way and made it their mission to make it exciting for them…

…But because they saw somebody living in an exciting way and wanted to join them.

Bowl-Size

Published on May 21, 2026

Like fish, we typically grow in proportion to the size of our environment.

Put into a bowl, and we’ll grow bowl-size.

Put into the ocean, and we’ll grow ocean-size.

If you find yourself feeling stuck at “bowl-size,” try swimming into bigger environments. Or focus so much on growing yourself that the bowl-size simply is no longer a good fit.

There’s a whole ocean out there. For all of us. In every field and life dimension.

The question is… what size feels Goldilocks right to you?