Explorations of Conscious Reality Creation, Mindfulness, Nontoxic Positivity, and More
If your life ended today, what would you regret? I’ve had a desire to cross the ocean and visit Europe for decades. Since my teens. In 2025, my wife and some friends and I started planning a trip to Italy. This was going to be a small group trip. The number varied, but we decided in 2025 to put it off until 2026. We were getting it all together, but unfortunately, we still couldn’t coordinate it. So we are delaying
This is the only way to grow. As you’re reading this, I’m doing something I’ve never done before. I have crossed an ocean to explore not just a country I’ve never been to before, but a continent. My wife and I have been planning to travel to Europe for years. Finally, we took the leap, and we are visiting England and exploring much of what it has to offer. I’ve visited two other countries, but both are part of North
It’s always good to question your beliefs. I began to share this idea for Pathwalking – choosing and deciding the paths you take for yourself – more than 14 years ago. While the core principle hasn’t changed, other elements of it have. Why? Because I’ve learned new things, had new experiences, made new discoveries about tangibles and intangibles along the way. My life has changed in circumstances in more ways than one. That’s because change is the one and only
But that doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile. It’s far too easy to feel sad, lost, and even hopeless in today’s world. So many things that make no sense have been almost normalized in distressing, depressing ways. It can feel like doom and gloom is all there is. And for some, this timeline is completely awful. Nobody reasonable can deny that. Yet that doesn’t mean that we can’t find and/or create positivity in the world today. This is not some Pollyanna,
Many can’t be avoided, so you get to decide what to do with them. I’ve been doing medieval fencing for about 35 years now. I fence in both single combat (one-on-one) and melee combat (teams of two to more than a hundred on each side). A key statement I learned when I began practicing melee command, was this: “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” This applies to life in many ways. That’s because change is the one and only
When you’re empowered, you become more capable overall. It is far too easy to go down a rabbit hole of negativity. Spend any amount of time on any social media channel, and you’ll likely wind up doomscrolling if you don’t self-edit. While this can, on the surface, seem innocuous, it very quickly becomes problematic. That’s because doomscrolling leads to negativity. And negativity, unchecked, disempowers us. That’s because negativity is made of low-frequency energy, which pulls you down and makes you
Applied mindfulness opens you to doing something. I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time sitting at my keyboard today, trying to find the words to write, the story I want to tell as I share my weekly philosophy with you. Nothing was coming to mind. Am I feeling depressed? No. Do I feel uncertain? Not particularly, no. Am I sad, hungry, flustered? Nope. Have I been doom-scrolling and making myself feel lost? Not really. So why am I unable to
Unlearning takes focused, mindful effort. One of the most infuriating things about the subconscious mind is its power of absorption. Seriously, it’s like an infinite sponge. Similarly, when you don’t wring it out from time to time, it gets nasty. This is often most apparent in how your subconscious holds onto ideas, beliefs, and values that are not your own. How does that happen? The indoctrination of life in modern society. With a few exceptions, people spend the first 20
This occurs when your ego thinks it’s protecting you. Probably the single greatest obstacle between where I am and where I desire to be is myself. Through meditation, mindfulness practices, and therapy, I’ve identified how I self-sabotage my own efforts. Why? Because of my fear of abandonment, which mostly manifests as an equal fear of success and failure. What does this look like? It’s the voice in my head telling me I’m not enough, not good enough, and that there
You ultimately get to choose negativity or nontoxic positivity. A lot of things happen in the world that you and I have no control over. If you spend any time watching or reading the news, doomscrolling social media, or otherwise giving these things intentional attention, they can, will, and do impact you. Yes, there is some terrible shit happening in the world right now. Russia and their war against Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, and don’t even get me started on
