Habits run our worlds. The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg is fascinating and shouldn't be missed. In it, Duhigg details the neuroscience behind how habits develop. Activities, when first performed, are managed by our frontal lobes and then, as we repeat them, are driven down into our more-efficient, faster-firing hippocampus. This saves us staggering amounts of energy and provides freedom to move onto new focuses. I am using this as I type, my fingers flying, knowing e

I’ll write about the emotional home tomorrow. Today was a bit of a failure. Yet still there were successes to celebrate. As I walked along the river today, I dropped down into a brutally depressed state. I was reminded that the meaning we attach to events is what makes or breaks us. There I was walking along with cold air on my face, a beautiful sky, and the river sparkling with light as birds touched down with a rush of water, and I was profoundly sad. There was only o

Brene Brown’s work on life fulfillment, vulnerability, empathy, etc. is not to be missed. She has so many excellent videos on You Tube. My absolute favorite is this one on empathy… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Evwgu369Jw …buuut that’s not what I’m on about today. Today is all about active gratitude. So the thing that I’d like to do over the next several days is go over the specific things that I’ve learned successful/fulfilled/sincerely happy people do to create those

Day 4… Success… almost… Every time I’ve taken on the challenge of applying the things I’ve learned about why people have fulfilling successful lives, over the course of several days, a peregrine feeling comes on, at first subtly, but grows every day I stay the course. It’s a sense of peace and well-being. It feels like bedrock, as though I’ve dug down to a foundation that I could build something real on. This is as opposed to the structures in my life I’ve built on the uns

Day 3 Failure I’m in day three, and it’s already time to discuss failure. I’ve failed… and you know what? …it’s totally fine. I expected it. I welcome it. I’ve finally learned to dance with failure the right way. My goal was to go for this thing 100%, and I was hitting 5-10% over time. What am I talking about by this? Well, there are certain key activities which lead to a much healthier state of mind. That healthier state of mind leads to greater productivity, a happ

Day Two… Mind Carving Actually, this won’t be about mind carving… the idea that as we think certain things, we gradually shape the sandstone canyon walls of our mind. I have to start one step before that, go back to our mind’s story for a moment and most importantly, how it causes us to filter reality. The thing about our minds is… we’re constantly ignoring details while magnifying others. I have led several friends through the following exercise to illustrate the human mi

Day One… The sandstone mind… The mind fools us all. We think we know truth, but we rarely do, at least not the entire truth. We’re story tellers. It’s built into our DNA. Last year, at Boy Scout camp, the troop was big and unruly. Leaders had to correct behavior often, and rarely were all the boys listening at once. At one point, I was so sick of the disrespect and dishonesty that I sat all the boys down around the fire pit and told them the story Beowulf’s fight with G

I’ve decided to take on an intense writing project related to the darkness that has overshadowed my life for so many years now. Very few around me know how hard it truly has been. Some think they do, but it’s worse… far worse. I hide it well… most days. Each morning has been like waking into a nightmare. I tell myself… get up… just keep going… one more day. I have, so far, but on the worst days, while I drag myself through, my thoughts frighten me. I can’t spend anothe