Anxiety & Desire

“While many people engaged in meditation claimed to find it made them more relaxed, I made a somewhat different discovery. Admittedly anxious to begin with, I stumbled on a rather odd realization: The opposite of anxiety is not calmness, it is desire. Anxiety and desire are two, often conflicting, orientations to the unknown. Both are…

Step Towards Desire

We all have things we want.  Things we want to be when we grow up, things we want to do on that bucket list, things we want to achieve sooner rather than later….  We have these desires that we label “If Only…” and then we stick them in a box and put them aside.  You…

Narrative Challenge

Narrative Challenge: The 1 Page Auto-Biography Telling our personal stories or narratives to others is important.  Our lives matter and we each have wisdom to share. However, when we tell someone our stories, we have an agenda (good/bad/meh) which informs how we tell them and what details we include, what we emphasize and what we…

Tho’ Much Is Taken

I will drink Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and…

Stuck On How

Life can be very much like a puzzle. There are all these things that need to get done, that we want to get done, that we should get done, and of course there are the things we call our real life which is the reason we’re doing all these things, but somehow all the things…

Let’s Talk About It

You can’t talk yourself into being changed. You can talk yourself into a process that will change you, but talking won’t make you take the actions and it won’t keep you at them past when it’s new or exciting or fun. Talking won’t conquer the fears that you’re avoiding. Actually, talking is something people do…

That’s Just Part of My Character

Is it?  Is it really?  People tend to excuse issues they have, struggles and reactions, hot buttons and behaviors, by saying that it’s just part of my character or that’s just the way I am or that’s just the way I’ve always been.  We don’t say this around the positive things such as intelligence, talent,…

Put Down the Stick

People think that they don’t measure up.  They aren’t meeting the goals that determine whether they are a success or a failure, that define their self-worth, that make for a “happy life” and so something must be wrong with them. Many times they can number those wrong things in great detail.  They spew out reams…

The Bridge To Nowhere

The bigger a plan, the more it stretches out over time, the more there are pieces which are blank or we put question marks in them because at the moment we don’t know.  Sometimes this is just because we don’t yet have the time to really sit down and figure them out. Sometimes it’s because…

Fractal Life

People think that following their path is a matter of finding the darn thing and then it will spool out in front of them and all they’ll have to do is walk it.  The focus is on the finding because somehow those wily paths in life are like Buggs Bunny and we’re Elmer Fudd.  So…