Archive
101 essays, newest first.
Fear. We all know it and prefer it not to be around. But what if it could serve a purpose? What if we used it wisely? What type of motivation may be had if we take it from an obstacle in front of us and place it behind us to push us forward?
Sometimes to win, sometimes you lose. Sometimes your first short form video ever gets 27,000+ views locally 😱
Work hard, think clearly, and have an eye for beauty. Being 'ready enough' is a myth, act accordingly.
Our nature can be a hindrance, or we can work with it. We're all shaped by experience and we might as well make it work in our favor to the highest degree possible.
When you're feeling lost, check into your current responsibilities, your current trajectory, and what belief you're religious about.
Test out as much as possible, as soon as possible. It may be slow in the short term, but it's productive in the long term.
In your pursuit of rising up in your niche, you'll slip up along the way. All good. Just reorient and refresh yourself. Remember, it's all about the process and how you show up for it.
Awake to your life, connect the dots of your entire story, and don't forget that the ego is just a nametag.
Here's a surefire way to arrive at creative insight (or at least get closer than normal). Give it a try, make the experiment, and be pleasantly surprised.
It's important to know that we are all climbing our own ladders. Knowing what your rungs symbolize, how long your ladder is, and what you're aimed at is crucial.
Move forward in your life gathering 'dots'. Occasionally use hindsight to see how they connect. Trust that one day, it'll mean something to you.
I just had to rant today, blessings, we're all gonna make it.
It's never too late to stumble upon an underlying principle of reality. (Especially one that can be put to use immediately)
Peace of mind isn't something easily attained, but it's also not as hard as you might think. When I reflect back on when I have the most peace of mind, it has a lot do with these 3 things.
Study up on the trajectories of prospering individuals. There's bound to be something to gain and apply in your own life.
Discernment is the greatest skill to develop in today's world. It will keep you out of trouble and allow you to live a heart-led life. Don't overlook it.
You're soul's calling is going to cost you whether you like it or not. Honesty is the surest path, but the true fuel is to burn the boats and go all-in.
When we compare ourselves with others, we easily slip into distraught or unfair pride. It's important to recognize your Branch Bias and how your generational level plays a role.
Creating something existential to work against is important for spiritual sustainability. If you lack a framework for meaning, you'll be in freefall. A rock, a source of truth is crucial.
Inner peace starts with freeing yourself from external expectations and demands. Reassess your priorities, surrender control to a higher power, and work through your emotions for true freedom.
Quick reminder for the easily distracted. Some tasteful 'ought to be's'.
Asking questions is better than seeking advice because you will be able to find a foundation of understanding to build upon moving forward - helping you connect the dots.
Discover who you are and what you're good at, then pour all your energy into it.
The synchronicities have been hitting. Here are the ideas that have been compounding in my mind and helping it happen.
Every day you can be learning a lesson or gaining insight. If you're like me, you'll be religious about getting these consistently. That's because I aim for a deep life full of treasures found.
The ego isn't all bad, despite its sleight of hand. Yes, it pretends to have earned all that the unconscious does, but it doesn't really have a choice in the matter. Life is easier with ego.
My life has been renewed, new mission, new purpose, alignment in the deepest way.
It may be woo and it may be for you, but more mental tools never seem to hurt. Here is a modified way to use Carl Jung's Active Imagination to get your head more clear.
Don't get caught up in culture's tricks of influence. You're in the game whether you act like it or not. But if you're not careful you'll find yourself adding in extra steps between you and your dharma.
I am doubling down on my mental congress by making a permissionless assignment to a very important mental department. All inspired by Ernest Shackleton's key to perseverance.
Taste is your greatest claim to individuality. Taste is embedded in your distinctive behavior and an expression of who you are, but you must first develop sensitivity and find a way to pull out your true preferences.
The thing I want most is self-mastery. This experience gave me a taste of what's possible and taught me a valuable lesson about akrasia & enkrateia. These insights will help you follow through on your aims too.
Life is a waiting game that can get the best of us. Here's how to prevent that.
Gratitude and grief preparation are the same thing. Think about it ahead of time and choose wiser ways of enjoying your people while you can.
Taking shortcuts for immediate results steals the meaningful impact that would have happened otherwise.
Some of the biggest problems in your life are 100% solvable. They are things within your control that you can do that will make a huge difference and it's actually simpler than you think.
If you want flow, look into your frontiers: who you are, your abilities & skills, and your unique story arc.
There are plenty of reasons to lose your way and fall prey to pessimism. You only need one reason for hope and you're set. Turns out, it's the most rebellious thing you can do.
Finding your soul is required if you don't want it to come finding you in less-than-ideal ways. Your inner life can be harmonious and can flow as it needs to in relationship with your soul.
How spiritual bypassing can derail your growth and the crucial connection between mind, body, & spirit.
The more boxes it checks, the more eager and determined I am to pursue it. In this case, we aim to solve a local problem in a sustainable, humble way.
It’s a very different birthday for me, but not in the way you might expect. It’s not about being 30, it’s about the start of a new decade and I love that. This decade, I’m determining now, will be the most pivotal one.The one that defines all others.
The path forward is about upgrading your problems with manifestation. Knowing this mistake, you will better understand how to go about progressing towards what you want.
Just like the maze game from your childhood, each day is the same. All you have to do is focus on the day and get from point A to point B. Make it to sleep and save your progress. Get better over time. A solid strategy.
By being rationally optimistic, questioning their beliefs, and embodying useful beliefs, individuals can minimize the hijacking of their beliefs by bad actors and lead their own brainwashing to achieve peace of mind and hope for the future.
Friends come and go, some stay, and an inner circle is crucial for wholesome living. Despite all this, we tend to let the importance of friendship slip away from us as we move through our days. Time poverty holds us back often, but maybe there's a way to recapture what we're losing lately.
If you want to be rich & wise, don't forget the rich part.
Leaving a true legacy for your children starts with knowing your role, considering the time allotted, and prioritizing your child's world over The world.
Sometimes you see a pattern arise and then the insight hits you. This is one of those that's helped me a ton & applies to so much.
Here's how to use inverse thinking to stay clear and focused on your unique path.
You are either evolving yourself or slipping back into your old ways - maybe even worse unfamiliar territory. In your mind, it feels like you are either evolving or sitting still on a plateau. That’s because the slipping up happens so subtly it’s hard to notice. Your ego may even be trying to protect you from realizing it.
Our minds are muddy. We get all stirred up each day as we scroll through media and are infiltrated with hundreds of other perspectives. Hard to know what you actually want when you're simultaneously throwing all of this extra weight on top. Let it settle.
We all have some emotional armor holding us back, keeping us 'safe'. It's time to deal with that. It's time to take it off, piece by piece, and set ourselves free.
Fear and laziness stand in your way. They push you to live a super 'normal' life. Meanwhile, your soul suffers. It must be an adventure and these frameworks will help you spice it up and live nobly.
It wouldn't hurt to reverse-engineer what contentment looks like.
You have to intentionally steer your life away from a monotone existence. Normal is a lie to avoid at all costs. Make your life juicy. Make it count.
You don't need anyone's permission to start following your calling. In a world where we are constantly bombarded with the influence of others, sometimes it takes an enormously powerful experience to give us a reality check.
When we are disconnected from our sense of self, it helps to understand our inner resources. Then we will be able to develop our intradependence and thrive in the unknown.
Master the mundane, tame your desires, and be open to alternative outcomes. You’ll find more enjoyment & suffer less unnecessarily.
You can use risk to attract flow, use psycho-technologies to drop in, or even get there through the steady practice of attention training.
People are in desperate need of encouragement. There are ways to reconnect with spirit, such as using the power of the imagination to speak with the unconscious. This all adds up, and with enough people, can change cultures.
Soul and ego tend to disagree, but syncing them up will unleash your force. Pay attention to doubt because there you'll find an equally proportional opportunity. Doubt, when studied closely, is actually a grand tease.
Cultivating consistency was no easy feat, but I'm learning many lessons along the way. For example, sustainable habits are crucial, prioritize shipping, & quality will evolve.
Diving deep into Carl Jung's practice of Active Imagination, you'll learn the basics of how to use it, what to be careful of, and the powerful changes it can have in your life.
Your relationship to altered states should be planned out in advance. For too many, it's based on whims & DM's. Get your practices on a calendar, find balance, and tap into the full range of human experience - sustainably.
If you're going after excellence, you will have to be obsessed. Obsessed about the right things and the only way to do that is with radical self-evaluations.
Acting on the unknown is how we have to operate most of the time in life. Inevitably, we will regret not making the perfect decision, but it's still more important to keep things moving.
Attacking the world with ripples of love. I'm nurturing my heart-bloom, understanding that compassion, empathy, and love have no limits and embracing the ripple effect of positive energy in the world.
Within my life's task, I want to creatively restore the internet. It can be puzzling though. Here's a quick article on how to ramp up inspiration, discover parts of yourself, and tackle the internet's shallowness.
Rarely do people look back fondly of their first job. It was a paradigm shift that immersed me into a subculture of fast-paced intensity, deep trust, and a community striving for mastery of one thing: skydiving.
When you realize that opportunities in your life offer more to gain than lose, you take advantage and the magical adventure begins.
There's no way to know the feeling until you go for it.
Before this, I didn't know who Graham was either, but I can assure you the man distilled a few gems. Depending on your season of life, one of these will speak more to you than others. For me, it was the time component I needed to hear the most.
Most things you think of as problems are just dichotomies that need to be managed. Most things are also not as hard as you might think. You've got to lean in and do whatever you can to stay ahead of your demons.
It's a problem that so few people spend time with their grandparents. Busyness and life stuff tend to get in the way. But what are we missing out on? What could we do to help redeem their livelihood a bit? Start asking them questions, and get their stories out before it's too late to share. When you give a grandparent dignity, you give them a chance to be an elder. Something our world is short on.
Turns out there can be a lot of overlap between building design and building a life. John Ruskin (unknowingly perhaps) tells us how to live life better.
Systems are the antidote to the natural friction entering your life. Bring order into your daily existence and make it flow effortlessly.
Calm Stoke is all about the vibe. It's a combination of controlling your nervous system, judging beliefs based on their utility/results, & maintaining a connection with the Divine.
Nature is a powerful force. Being aware of its seasonal effect on your life is critical for effortless action. Well, maybe not totally effortless, but at least with some degree of awareness, you won't spend unnecessary energy going against the flow of nature.
Kids are always going to hit you with those rarely-asked questions, be grateful. Even if you have little to spare, there's still a way to make great memories and save your own little world.
Switching to barefoot shoes gets you closer nature & human nature. Once you begin to connect with nature in one aspect of your life, it changes how you view your relationship with nature in the other parts of your life.
Exploring the sacred depth of one of the best pieces I've been re-reading often. (It just touches my soul so much that I can't not do it)
Regardless of what dream you're pursuing, Bill Gurley's wisdom applies. You can become one of the most knowledgeable people in the world about your craft if you so choose. The internet has eliminated your excuses. The tips Bill distills are so practical it will make you uncomfortable *not* to take action immediately.
You don't have to let life just happen to you. Undoubtedly, you can’t control everything, but you can become aware of what is within your control and act within that realm of influence.
The sweet spot to evolving beyond what you currently are lies just outside what you can do now. You must feel as though you’re leveraging every bit of talent you possess. Doing all you can with what you’ve got. These 4 quick frameworks will help you drop into flow more often.
Been thinking about the next decade and I'm feeling good about it. This straightforward exercise clears up the worries and connects you with who you're becoming in a tangible way.
Our understanding of the world is built incrementally, all while nature takes care of the complexity. But as we go, we learn that our problems aren't all they're made out to be, literally.
Staying on track with your own thing is about hyper-focusing on the controllable inputs. The handful of things entirely up to you and within your realm of influence. The more focus you put there, the more you get a grip on things, the more you need to monitor the outputs, the results. This awareness is how it turns into a feedback loop. Otherwise, it’s a linear waste of time.
I was a part of a psychedelic grad student listserv for several years through undergrad and years since. One night, an idea led to me spending the last 24+ months building a niche community for up-and-coming psychedelic professionals. In this piece, I give you 4 takeaway lessons you can use to build your niche passion project.
You're surrounded by opportunities, tests, signs, and synchronicities. Stay curious.
You're not just one person. You're a community of characters that require maintenance & attention. Sometimes you'll need to be shifting the 'org' around, but it'll be worth to have the right versions of you in place.
Had let the article stack and newsletter simmer over the last 19 months, now I'm back and ready to cook.
We live in a wild magical world where way more is possible than we typically realize. Open your eyes, take advantage, and see where it goes.
Getting a grip on your social feeds for maximum benefit isn't as hard as you might think. Here are 3 things to cut out and 1 more to engage deeply with.
Sometimes you'll find a piece of wisdom that you can't ignore. It induces goosebumps and feels visceral. You have to act. Here are 3 quotes that do just that.
Your life is full of choices and it's hard to get clear directions on what to choose. Luckily, our conscience is embedded and always willing to help. We just have to listen.
Bringing any idea from imagination into the 3D world is going to be way way harder than you'd imagine. Perhaps this is good that we don't see, initially, the full extent of how hard something will be to see through to the end. It's a blindspot of the creative process, yet even if we're aware of the challenge ahead...do it anyway.
Some drugs, like psychedelics, can lead to a better life, an upward spiral of positive change. You're already on drugs, might as well make it count.
Take careful account of what you have real control over. Act from a place of intention with what you're willing to go through based on what's meaningful to you. This will get you feeling free internally.
We all have a cognitive surplus of time & attention, but what's our return look like on that spent attention? Using your curiosity to be productive will help you find serendipity in your life.
Moving across the country, diving into the unknown, and coming out on the other side in tack wasn't easy, but damn was it an adventure. Penetrating the maturing cannabis industry was a little more difficult than I initially thought. Don't accept no as an answer when your convictions tell you otherwise.