adapting

The Decentralization of Everything

April 12, 2020

One more thing this pandemic and the resultant changes in our lives have achieved is to help us loosen our grip on many things we have held tightly. Many are shaken at the fragility of our existence and how quickly our lives can change. Many of our modern conveniences have been taken from us or have been significantly restricted. We cannot gather together or freely walk into a store. We are being forced to practice surrender in that we cannot just compulsively attain comfort and convenience – the things we believe make our lives so great. Read More

Mining Something from These Waiting Periods

April 5, 2020

Waiting periods are uniquely unsettling. It seems the whole world is currently waiting around for things to “go back to normal.” There is only speculation about when this all might end. None of us really knows. For people who value a sense of control, that can be rather unsettling. Maybe this is our new normal. It seems to be, at least for a time. What’s problematic is that we believe we deserve to have a stable, comfortable, unfettered existence. While it is likely things will return to a form of normalcy, there is no guarantee. And if we are only waiting around, pining for normalcy, we might fail to gather what this present struggle has to offer. Read More

I’ve Stopped Trying To Be Happy

January 27, 2019

I have stopped trying to be happy. For a while, I thought it might be possible, but now I believe something different. There was a point three years ago when my grandmother died and I realized the rest of my life was going to be a series of losses leading up to my own death. Then my family and I lost a few more people before their time and a series of other unfortunate events ensued. It was the most difficult time of my life (still is), but I have also found a lot of meaning in it. One of the things that has changed is that I no longer believe being happy is the singular goal. I mean I don’t mind being happy and know that I will be happy sometimes without even trying, but I just mean I’ve given up on happiness as the point of life. Read More

Flex Your Resilience Muscle

April 21, 2018

There are two kinds of people in the world: people who display resilience and people who do not. The thing is you can be one or the other at any given moment. The difference between someone who is resilient and someone who is not is that one displays resilience and the other does not. 🙂 Faced with a challenge, the resilient one pushes herself across the threshold into the unknown. It’s like jumping out of an airplane. Either you launch yourself out or you don’t. Read More

Continual Rebirths

April 18, 2018

Life done well is the continual process of reinventing yourself. Sometimes this happens in a sad way – as in a mid-life crisis: finding a new wife, a new life and maybe a new car. Sometimes people just take on a new outward appearance. Your outward appearance can be a reflection of an internal process, but recreating yourself is more than just changing how you look. It is undergoing real and thorough transformation. Some people age, but do not really grow. They stay rigidly attached to “the way they have always done things.” They don’t adapt. They just stay put. Read More

Creating Something Beautiful: The Synthesis of Our Pain

January 24, 2018

Creativity is the only thing. We all enter these states of confusion, disrepair and darkness at times. These can be particularly distressing if you don’t know what they’re about – what you can mine from them or what their meaning is in your life. But the secret is in the sauce: making sense of and meaning of your brokendownness. It’s about what beauty you can make from the ugliness, the despair. All beauty emerges from darkness. What else is life about? Read More

Harnessing the Power of Your ADHD

April 28, 2017

We tend to think of problems with focus and attention as impairments in brain functioning. Forgetting things, losing things and not being able to focus on the task at hand are all problematic, but it is important to understand what is actually going on in our ADHD brains and how we can use them optimally. It is not that we are incapable of focus; we may just need to put in a little extra effort to be able to harness all our brains are capable of doing. The ADHD brain is actually moving too fast. In most cases, ADHD is more like “too much attention” than not enough. We can pay attention to too many things at once. We end up focusing on things we don’t need to. Or if asked to do something that is not challenging mentally (doesn’t take much processing power), our minds drift because of the simplicity (or dullness) of the activity. Read More

Resonance and Drag

April 27, 2017

God and universe are system. We are constantly interacting with them – with God, one another and the environment around us. The cycles of interaction (feedback loops) between you and all things in your life can largely affect how you feel day-to-day. If you are getting positive feedback from others in your life and your environment, you feel good. This is what we call resonance. It is the feeling you get when you are doing something you were born to do or when you are spending time with someone who just gets you. You feel vitalized and creative. On the other hand, if you are getting negative feedback from others and your environment, you feel stressed, worn out, and maybe even depressed. Read More