Nudges from Nature

Boy, have I been struggling lately. The world seems dark. Again. Loved ones are sick. Loved ones have died. Loved ones are anxious and depressed. Shit, I'm anxious and depressed. It's not like before though. It's nothing like before. Well, it's a little bit like before. Okay, maybe a lot like before. Almost the same as before, actually. What's different are two things: Tools, and Faith. Ah, man the tools. Phil Stutz (recently profiled in Jonah Hill's Stutz)  has some great ones. His book The Tools  covers them in greater detail than the movie, and his website describes them in practical detail. Sam Harris's Waking Up app is a direct, no-nonsense approach to meditation that is in some ways so bland and other ways so rich that it's suitable for just about anybody.  Headspace , of course, I owe to getting me started in meditation, largely due to it's capability to set up a 2-minute meditation -- about all I could handle when I first sought relief. I o

Meeting the twins is one of my earliest memories. I must have been five or six. It was at the Christmas Party my parents threw each year at our ranch style home in the Santa Clara Valley as the first layer of silicon was covering its orchards. The twins were fantastic. They were happy, smiling, and full of energy. They had curly heads of hair cropped to the length of their jawbones and they looked absolutely identical. I had never seen twins before and I was mesmerized. They were cute. Like, super attractive cute. As a child with excessive amounts of energy myself, these two were tailor made for me. I couldn't keep up. We'd run from one length of the house to the other. Again and again. Weaving between the cocktail- and hors d'oeuvres-carrying adults at dangerous speeds. They were like Thing 1 and Thing 2. Ripping around the house together, we ended up under the telephone desk which was like a little fort. Suddenly we were in another world. Our own, beautiful place away fro

I delivered some work recently, with ambitious objectives, and under tight deadline. I've been in the high tech industry for 25 years. I think it was some of the best, smartest, and insightful work I've ever done. Additionally, it was one of the most rewarding high pressure projects I've ever been on, and I've been on a lot. What made it so rewarding is how calm and composed I was compared to high-pressure instances of my past. While several factors contributed to this, I give the vast majority of credit to my meditation practice and the ability to acknowledge the intensity of emotions, yet not get caught up in them. The feedback I received, however, was not great. "A base hit, but not a home run" was the crux of it. Not terrible. Not even that bad. Maybe even acceptable or good.  But not at all the same self-assessment I concluded on my own. But I took it hard. I've been ruminating on it. Something I thought I'd been able to get past. But it's sti

One of the more surprising aspects to come from my meditation practice is the occasional insight into Bible verses. Like many observations during meditation, these insights seem to come out of nowhere. They rise up with the clarity of direct experience and often seem just as real and tangible as the apple falling from the tree that gave Newton the Law of Gravity. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? When we shift our awareness to the body, peace can descend upon us. When we drop our consciousness from the mind to the body, there is a relief to be found from the tenacity of rumination. And the better we treat our bodies with fresh air, moderate exercise, and nutritional foods, the more it becomes apparent that by treating our bodies as sacred, as temples worthy of great respect, the more divine they become, and the more powerful and direct is our connection to a higher power.

No one? Not true. Find and acknowledge those that care for you. 

Writers write. If you want to be a writer, you must write. To become creative, you must ship the work ( thank you Seth ). Yes, quality matters. Absolutely. And I want to produce the best work I can. But I don't ever let my concerns about quality prevent me from posting my work. If I did, I might endlessly ruminate in hours of edits trying to achieve a state of quality that is at least elusive and perhaps non-existent. I've written hundreds of thousands of words the no one has ever read. I only recently started sharing my work publicly on a regular basis, and it has changed and only improved my capacity to think. Getting feedback on a written piece is very different than producing it and leaving it to collect virtual dust on a Google drive. Whether it's simply a view or a click-and-leave, whether it's a full-read or generates a follower, (or low-and-behold the Holy Grail of blogging, a feedback comment!), doesn't really matter in the big picture.  All tell me somethi

One of the suggested methods of meditation that I came across that felt the most strange when I tried it was what I call Laughing Meditation. The technique is super simple: laugh on purpose for one minute. Early in the beginnings of my entry into daily meditation, I would only meditate for two minutes. Like most drawn to meditation, I wasn't exactly in the best emotional or mental state when I began. Two minutes was about all I could muster, but even that short amount of time provided me with some relief. I often say my brain was a muscle that hadn't been un-flexed for seemingly forever. Two minutes was enough to give me a glimpse of what it might be like to relax that muscle. But it was deeper than that and I was struggling with some heavy and negative emotional states. Just laugh for one minute. It was the most awkward thing to try. Especially considering one minute was already fifty percent of my total capacity to formally practice at the time. It was awkward. It felt fake.

A pivotal point on my journey to find some relief from suffering came when I read that anxiety is living in the future and depression is living in the past. It made immediate sense to me and the understanding of that dynamic clarified that the route to peace is in the present moment. It remained a theory, as for some reason as humans we seem hardwired in a way that the present moment is elusive. Around the same time, I came across Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now . For some reason I can't recall, I was listening to the audio book -- something I just don't do. I don't mind audio books, I just have a strong default mode to reading. If for some reason you have not yet read it, I highly recommend it. And in this case, the audio book was absolutely fantastic. It's read by the author, and his personal account of his awakening experience at the beginning of the book is captivating. This week, I've been in a funk. After several weeks of unprecedented productivity and op

I've always read a lot. But I'm reading more than ever at the moment. And spending more time reading than ever.  By that I mean I'm reading more slowly than I ever have before. I'm savoring the words and considering them more deeply.  The books I'm reading now often seem to carry a more precise and practical relation to my place on my life's journey. It's been interesting to give myself permission to read so much more. Reading often still feels like entertainment to me, or some sort of passive ingestion of life lessons that should be less valuable than hardcore, direct experience. You can't learn to ride a bicycle from reading a book. You have to ride the bicycle. But understanding the mechanics of the gears and the role of physics and momentum in the underlying truth behind that activity -- there's a real acceleration of understanding by reading the words of others who have studied it more deeply and experienced it more frequently, as opposed to st

When the waters are muddy, just stand still. I heard this for the first time when I was in a terrible state. I was that typical archetypal person you read about: seemingly successful on the outside (though not that successful), but whose life lacked meaning and purpose. But I knew it didn't have to be that way, and I was going to change things. I was going to find my purpose. In hindsight, I don't think it's wise to set out with determination and resolve to find your purpose come hell or high water. I think we all have a purpose. And it's available to each of us to find it. But in seeking it with the ego leading the way, we stir things up that delay it's finding. After a chance meeting at a little league baseball practice, I found a person I could talk to about my search and who was willing to listen. Really listen. I described it to him as we sat under a grove of eucalyptus trees looking out at the Pacific Ocean. Despite that romantic sounding scene, I was in a dar

The thing I want the most right now is to finish and publish my book. One book in particular.  And yet, it continues to lag into a trailing position in terms of things I work on every day. I'm publishing a blog regularly. I'm collaborating with a writing partner on another project. I recently outlined another book after agreeing to help a friend through some tough times. I'm dedicating sixteen hours a week to a new client. I just finished an intense two-week, heads down project for another. And I need more clients and more projects, so there's the business development side and pipeline management. Then there's my daily meditation practice. Journaling. And the normal responsibilities that come with being a husband and father. And yet, my science fiction book? The one thing I'm most fascinated by? The one thing I'm most curious to work on and finish? I tend to it, but almost at an arm's length.  Why does it always come last? I'm genuinely exploring thi

We take so many things for granted. Particularly when years have passed in the company of those we love. I've known my wife for 27 years. We married 16 ago. So we had a good 10 year stint where we dated, remained friends, and then got serious. My wife didn't fit the profile of who I thought I should marry. I was supposed to marry a Catholic girl, probably one I met in college, and certainly of some social status. My wife was raised in the rural south, supported herself since she was a young teenager, and an independent soul. I liked her immediately. She had depth, read good books, and like good music. She was wearing a Grateful Dead t-shirt when I met her, had long brown hair down past her hips, and a smile that said carefree. It took more than 10 years of me mostly trying to avoid the truth: that I loved her more than anyone and I wanted to spend my life with her. It was an undiagnosed and mysterious illness that proved that to me. There's nothing quite as powerful in driv

A little while back I wrote about being invited to join a group seemingly designed for people who shared common interests of creativity, entrepreneurship, and spiritual tendencies.   I still think the only reason I registered as a hit on the algorithm was because of my Catholic school background, but I digress. One of the immediate impacts of joining the group is it gave me permission to explore, or re-explore, the possibility that a higher power exists and that by tending to a connection with it, we'll get some help on our journeys out of suffering. The organizer of the daily virtual gatherings has an unusual candor about sharing his personal beliefs on this matter: he calls it God, and that's what he believes, but he always invites and ensures everyone is welcome to call it whatever you want or believe however you believe. It makes no difference to the practice. I believe that. Although I try to give great exception to my Catholic grammar school, and it's quite easy to d

 1) Start with two minute sessions Two minutes really is enough to start. Fine if you want to go longer, but at least get two minutes in. Set a timer. 2) Forget about streaks Aim to meditate *today*. Not every day. Streaks are the worst thing for any meditation practice. Stop thinking about them at all, and instead, just meditate today. Whether you did yesterday, or the past 100 days, or not doesn't matter in the slightest. Just meditate. Today 3) Breathe The breath is the most powerful portal to becoming a meditator. It's always there for you. Always accessible. At any moment, you are free to take focus on your breath and in doing so will remove one more atom-thin layer of separation between you and the divine. 4) Quality doesn't matter There is no such thing as quality in meditation. Set your timer for two minutes and meditate. If you stop and take two minutes to meditate, you are meditating. Really. It sounds ridiculous, but trust me. Even if you're distracted, or co

Patience and persistence. Be patient. Persist. That’s it.  Anything is achievable if you can foster patience and persist in your attempts to achieve it. Absolutely anything.  The radical nature of the change may not be apparent day over day, though sometimes it might. However, like building muscle or growing your hair long, it can seem like nothing is happening until one day you just see it.  Persist. Be patient. Persist. Be patient. Write them down. Repeat them to yourself frequently.  Persist. Be patient. Anything you desire can be yours.

Even if you only dabble in meditation and mindfulness, you’ll hear this a lot: you are not your thoughts. You’ll also hear that thoughts are not the cause of your suffering so much as your relationship to them. It’s helpful to view thoughts as a form of energy. Everything is energy, right? It’s the constant of the universe. Light is energy at, well, the speed of light. Matter is energy slowed down to a crawl.  Thoughts? Feelings? I guess perhaps somewhere in between or an interlocking set of both, the interplay between the electrical impulses course if through your body and triggering your mass of muscles and blood and brains into some sort of endeavor around consciousness. Stress hurts. Physically hurts. When you turn attention to become more aware of your thoughts and emotions, you realize how much they actually physically hurt. And, while additional guidance from meditation teachers is often not to judge them, just be aware of them, it's unavoidable to me in this non-enlightened

My middle school daughter discovered this week that students in our town ride the bus for free.  My daughter has a major meticulous streak in her. I was fascinated and mildly amused to watch her study the lines of the bus map with abandon.  I could feel her energy: suddenly her world was opening up. Her circle of travel became immense, now unrestrained by how far she could walk, or ride her bike, or her argumentative capabilities to convince her parents to drive her. I could see it in her entire body. She was almost shivering with excitement. After she had mapped her route to get to the climbing gym in the next town over, she recruited a couple friends to get in on her plan. She was on fire as she wound down from her burst of energy that Friday night. She didn't ask for anything, except that her mom wake her in time so she could walk to the bus station to meet her girlfriends on Saturday morning in time to catch the first bus over to her destination. While my wife and I enjoyed our

 "I didn't learn anything from you," is what I heard my new client say. Did he really say "from you"? In retrospect. Maybe not. Maybe that's what I heard, but that's not what he said. But it's really been bothering me. Maybe what he really said was, "I didn't learn anything." He apologized for being harsh. I hadn't thought he was being harsh. I thought he was being helpful. I picked up this project on very short notice. It was already a tight deadline. They were one week into a three-week project when I got a text from a former boss, current colleague, and lifelong friend.  "You might hear from Michaela. She's got an urgent project." Was the notification on my phone. Immediately following it was the notification of an email from Michaela. Who I had never met. Within a couple hours, I had the verbal go ahead. The previous consultant had a family emergency. Michaela sounded a bit panicked. The project seemed perfect for

I've always wanted to be an author, but I've never written a book. I've always wanted to be fit, but I've never stuck to an exercise program. I've always wanted to record a song, but I've never booked a studio. For much of my life, I've fit nicely and neatly into the role of high tech executive. I applied for a copywriter job, but they offered me one in account management. It was a blast. It was during the dot com boom, and it seemed we could do no wrong.   After the bust, I made an effort to go back to my roots. I applied again for a copywriting job. Well, first I moved to the South where a two bedroom apartment cost $300 a month, utilities included, and I fished a lot and learned how to slow smoke meats on the barbecue. And then I came back to the Bay Area, and applied again for a copywriting job. This time I got it. Three months later I was an account executive again and on a twenty year path that would take me into the halls of some of the world's m

While in high school I remember seeing a news story about a football coach who coached from the sidelines in a wheelchair. His condition also prevented him from calling out plays to the players on the field, so he would whisper them to his wife, who would then relay them into the action. I was shocked and confused. I asked my parents how in the world could someone who doesn't play football coach a football team? "How often does Larry get in the water with you?" was the response.  Larry was my water polo coach. Like all other water polo coaches I had ever seen, and I'd seen a lot, he coached from the pool deck. That single sentence lifted my veil of illusion. By pointing out my own direct experience to me, an entire train wreck of misunderstandings and assumptions was wiped away. In an instant. Of course this handicapable man could coach. He knew the game. Loved the game. He was a winning coach. He was well-respected and well-liked. I would go on to learn about people