Nudges from Nature

I've read a lot of books on meditation and mindfulness, and occasionally the topic overlaps with the subject of prayer. I was reviewing a list of recommended reading by a community leader and as I glanced across the familiar titles by Eckhart Tolle, Neville Goddard, Napolean Hill, and even Stephen Pressfield, I came across a title I hadn't seen before called The Prayer of Jabez  by Bruce Wilkinson.  It was published in 2000 and was a NY Times Bestseller. I'm surprised I haven't come across it before.  Perhaps it falls off these more modernistic lists because of its framework within biblical and core Christian beliefs, but the higher level and perhaps simplified message resonates across spiritual lines: have faith and good things will happen. Stop thinking so much. Trust your intuition. The Prayer of Jabez is an obscure passage from the bible hidden in one of those inexplicably long genealogies occurring in Chronicles (Jabez is specifically mentioned in 1 Chronicles 4:9-

Ever since seeing Star Wars as a kid, I became fascinated with careers in creativity. Could someone really make a living telling stories? And not just a living, but become really, really rich and really, really famous? And not just stories, but creating...anything?  George Lucas, Stephen Spielberg, Cat Stevens, Neil Diamond, Steve Wozniak, Jim Henson, Evel Knievel -- these people were creating things, and talking so casually about their creations as if they were just another moment in a day-in-the-life of a whole-minded person. I was fascinated and wondered where these people had come from. They just appeared. Like magic. I quickly succumbed to society's narrative of the overnight success. After all, I had never heard the name George Lucas before Star Wars was released, Spielberg before Raiders of the Lost Ark, Wozniak before the Apple I.  And then suddenly, there they were. They were everywhere. Every talk show. TV, radio, morning, night. Their faces were on billboards, their voic

Fear. Excitement. Anger. Commitment. Uh oh. These are the five stages of DIY Home Improvement projects.  I wrote recently about finally facing the fear of addressing a water collection issue underneath a second story outdoor balcony that had been nagging me for fifteen years. Once I got a handle on the reality of what I was facing, which was not as bad as the nightmare scenario I had been building in my mind over that long time period, I found myself excited to tackle the project. The second phase kicked in: Excitement. My dad was a skilled handyman around our house. He taught me a few things. This was now my chance to challenge myself and put my knowledge into action and skills to the test. Then I faced another big challenge: Anger.  I was suddenly overcome with anger at myself for letting this go so long. How could I have done this? Thid was neglect. I simply refused to address the problem. Mixed with anger, I found myself experiencing an emotion I hadn't experienced in a long t

I turned to face a demon that's been haunting me for fifteen years this past weekend.  This demon was different from the others in that it was an actual physical fear. I live in my head too much. Way too much. My default experience in battling demons is internal: the fear of failure, imposter syndrome, forgiveness, resistance, persistence, grit...the list goes on and on. But this fear has been right in front of my eyes -- or rather just beyond what I could see.  It's a janky modification to the deck in the back of my home, done by, local lore tells me, the lost-his-way son-in-law of the family that lived here prior who had some money issues so he "helped around the house." Anyone with a little common sense would know this guy didn't have much of it, nor much experience with the trades. It looked like a total hack job. The boundary of my fear was with overlapping sheets of corrugated galvanized steel that were nailed to the bottom of a second floor outdoor Douglas

One of my favorite pieces of advice came from my Coach.  This guy is a Coach with a capital C.  Not a life coach. Not a personal development coach, or career coach, or leadership coach. Not a baseball coach. Though he does in fact do all of these things, I simply consider him Coach. It's a major part of who he is. I was going through a challenging time, and I wasn't giving in. I kept at it. I was going to fix things. Fix my situation. Fix my job. Fix my health. Fix my attitude. Fix my life. Fix everything. And yet, there we sat drinking hot coffee and I just didn't have it in me. I was drained. Exhausted. Nothing I was doing seemed to work. And like with any good coach, I was able to be honest about where my head was at. He and I often talk baseball. It's part of the circumstances of how we met and his philosophy on baseball is as much centered on life skills as it is on athletics and what happens on the diamond. "Sometimes, when you're in a slump, it's a g

ATTENTION ALL WRITERS:  Try ChatGPT now. Artificial Intelligence has been getting a lot of attention lately, primarily due to the unprecedented popularity of AI chatbot ChatGPT. There are numerous practical and philosophical angles to approach the topic of AI, ranging from the terrifying to the sublime. We simply have no way of knowing what these technologies will lead to, while the risks and upsides are both immense. One thing is clear: interest in these technologies is MASSIVE.  ChatGPT acquired its first million users the five days following its launch on November 30, 2022. For comparison, Candy Crush, which launched a decade ago, took a year to get to 100 million users. The telephone? Launched in 1878, took 75 years. As a tech professional, I've been captivated by the social experiment of it all, and have been actively engaging in conversations on the topic.  Yesterday, I was talking to a former Amazon executive in a wide ranging discussion on the topic, and amidst some of the

Listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge…Success will follow - Viktor Frankl To have any chance at a life fulfilled, at achieving some sense of accomplishment, of finding any sense of satisfaction in this crazy swirl of cosmos you find yourself in, you must learn to turn your attention inward and listen to yourself. It’s not necessarily easy to do, to pause for a minute and take stock of what you think or what you feel, much less attach value and importance to it, and even less so to act on it.  Nor is it at all supported or encouraged in modern day, western cultures. We are constantly being led away from our inner guidance system, and instead led to feel insecure, full of doubt, and fearful.  This is better for an economic structure built on consumption. There’s a product to solve for everything under the sun. We are addicted to treatments. We have few cures. If you’re reading this, you’re looking for some answers. They