“Action expresses priorities.” – Mahatma Gandhi We each default to our foundational identity. It’s just who we are, demonstrated in action and prioritization again and again. This is either beneficial to our current and future self or detrimental. To change requires deliberate focus on habit formation and environmental changes like not buying cookies for the…
They say that habits are made to be broken. But who wants to break positive habits? Still, every now and then our routines are disrupted by forces out of our control. Sometimes people or events occur that upset the apple cart. Sometimes [gasp] even the very things that define our identity are disrupted. This summer…
“I believe that happiness is, it’s really a default state. It’s what’s there when you remove the sense that something is missing in your life. We are highly judgmental, survival, and replication machines. We are constantly walking around thinking I need this, I need that, trapped in the web of desires. Happiness is that state…
“Draw a timeline of your life from now to the grave, then divide it into intervals of five or ten years. Each of those intervals—say, from age 30 to 40, or from 70 to 75—is a time bucket, which is just a random grouping of years. Then think about what key experiences—activities or events—you definitely…
I was bragging about a blister yesterday. This wasn’t just any blister, this was a rowing-induced, thousands-of-meters-sweating-and-working blister. I haven’t had one of those in a long time. Partly, this is breaking in a new rowing ergometer with a handle that doesn’t offer the cushioning of the previous rowing ergometer’s handle. But the handle is…
The forest is dead quiet in the early morning hours when you walk out into it. At least until the creatures assess you and, seeing no imminent threat, go back about their business. It’s akin to going to a cocktail party and either working the room as the life of the party or receding back…
“The business of life is the acquisition of memories. In the end that’s all there is.” — Mr. Carson of Downton Abbey “You retire on your memories. When you’re too frail to do much of anything else, you can still look back on the life you’ve lived and experience immense pride, joy, and the bittersweet…
You have been forced to enter empty time.The desire that drove you has relinquished.There is nothing else to do now but restAnd patiently learn to receive the selfYou have forsaken for the race of days.At first your thinking will darkenAnd sadness take over like listless weather.The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.You have traveled…
Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest, and I’d planned to do just that. There shall be no hiking or waterfall chasing for you, I told myself. But when you believe that we aren’t built to be sedentary beings, eventually those rigid thoughts of who we ought to be evolve into action. I…
I want to break free, I want to break freeI want to break free from your liesYou’re so self-satisfied I don’t need youI’ve got to break freeGod knows, God knows I want to break free— Queen, I Want to Break Free When does a great habit ground another habit before it can take off? Are…