Category: Meaningful Connection

Below is my highly refined checklist of what makes me feel like I actually visited a place when I travel to visit a place. Because as some of you may relate, there have been plenty of times when I visited a place, did some things, left, and felt like I didn’t really visit the place at all. The list below is my unique concoction of things that act as an antidote to that feeling.

In no particular order:

• One local bookstore
• One quaint coffee shop
• One offbeat nature path
• One unique-to-the-area attraction
• One conversation with a stranger
• One conversation with a local friend (if applicable)

…How about you? What makes you feel like you’ve actually visited a place when you visit a place? I’d love to hear in a reply.

P.s. This was my vacation reflection from Monday, April 24, 2023.

Before deep inner work can begin, an empty block of time—filled with nothing at all—needs to be present.

What I’m also learning, while visiting family out of town, is that having an empty block of time—filled with nothing at all—is a great strategy for allowing deep inter-relational work to begin.

Having structured activities, sightseeing adventures/tours, and meals planned together is undoubtedly great. But, it seems to me that it is in the in-between time—in the moments where nothing is happening at all—where all the magic happens.

Most of what we do every day is work for others, digitally lurk in the background of other people’s lives, and consume other people’s content… all of which provides no meaningful two-way connection to either others or ourselves.

This is why so many of us feel so disconnected in the age of connection.

What brings us closer to people isn’t doing work for them, lurking, or consuming one directional content… what brings us closer to people is:

• Meals spent together
• Rich conversational exchange
• Adventures embarked on together
• Activities/ Hobbies enjoyed together
• Long car rides/ walks in nature together
• Chats at a coffee shop/ by fireside together
• Projects/ art/ problem-solving done together
• And so on…

And what brings us closer to ourselves is everything listed above… only by and for ourselves.

So, if you’re feeling disconnected and lonely, make it a goal to take the initiative on one of the above mentioned endeavors (for both others and for yourself) and continue to do so regularly.

Waiting for others to take the initiative only perpetuates that disconnected feeling and strips you of the control you have over your life situation.

I promise, if you can find ways to add even just one of the above-mentioned ideas into your days or weeks… you’ll slowly, slowly, start to feel more and more connected to this life.

P.s. The next book I’ll be uploading quotes from is Make Your Bed by Admiral William H. McRaven. If you’d like to read along… info, links, and such can be found here ➜

Sometimes love needs space.

What makes the fire burn strong is the balance between wood and no wood; burn and breath; presence and absence.

Too much of one and it’ll smother. Too much of the other and it’ll wane until there’s nothing left for the flames to grab. Navigate this balance mindfully and you’ll keep your fire—and love—burning strong.

Assume the fire will keep itself in order… or try to forcefully overkeep it… and it’ll die.

When you visualize the love you share with another as a fire… what do you see?

A waning, untended to, slowly collapsing fire? A huge pile of wood with a suffocating flame? Or a beautifully balanced, well ordered and maintained fire you can cozy up to at the end of a long, cold day?

Spend some time with this meditation and treat your visualized fire how you would that fire while camping at the outset of a cool, crisp evening.

Love, like fire, requires active involvement if we want to passively enjoy its emanating heat.

• To the loyal, overworked, under appreciated parent…
• To the initiative-taking, hardworking, underpaid employee…
• To the relentlessly positive, upbeat, taken-for-grated friends…

Thank you.

P.s. Use this as a writing prompt: who do you think is overdue for gratitude? Even if you don’t express it to them directly, expressing it viscerally can have a rippling effect at later points in your life.

If you want to learn how to not take things personally…

Simply meditate on the times when you did something that another took personally that was completely unintentional, misunderstood, or misconstrued. Times when you:

• Took your anger out on somebody who had nothing to do with what you were angry at.
• Underwent intense periods of growth/ change that made you less available and more distant to those you used to spend time with.
• Expressed an opinion that hurt/offended the person you were sharing it with, when you had a completely different person/ type of person in mind.

I think we’ve all been there.

The all-too-often shared reality we face as humans is that we often act selfishly before we think selflessly. We get consumed in being the center of our own worlds and forget about how our actions might affect the world of others.

The truth is: rarely does anything we do have to do with anybody other than ourselves and how we’re feeling.

So, when somebody does something that feels personal, remember, it most likely has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them.

P.s. Have you been taking these posts personally (in a good way)? You can support my ongoing work by getting me a coffee here :)