Upgrading the Healing Frame

One thing that seemed to keep me stuck for quite a while when I was younger was the healing frame, i.e. layering a desired area of improvement with the perspective that I needed to “heal” something within myself. The healing frame remains a popular way to frame various aspects of self development, addiction recovery, human…

Timing Your Passion

When some aspect of life feels forced, and you have to push through with a lot of discipline to make progress, it might mean that the timing is wrong for you. If you feel like putting it off, maybe do exactly that. Other people may tell you that you need to advance some area of…

Creative Courage

I love the feeling of making a big creative commitment, knowing that I have to lean into trust, rely on my knowledge and skills, and take lots and lots of action to follow through. It reminds me of when I used to go cliff diving on Catalina Island when I was younger, jumping off a…

Benefits of Eating Raw

It’s wonderful to be on Day 7 of my year of eating raw. I think I’m past the initial detox phase, and I’m flowing nicely into the beneficial part of this experience. It really has been super easy to reload these habits – not really a challenge, just a different way of experiencing life. As…

A Growth Heartset

You may have heard about the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset and how important a growth mindset is for self-development. You may not have considered how important a growth heartset is too. While a growth mindset is wonderful, it’s not enough. There are plenty of people with growth mindsets who struggle,…

How to Handle People Who Easily Become Defensive

I had a great realization when going through Dr. Julie Helmrich’s Science of Conflict course recently. One idea from that course helped me make sense of an issue that had been popping up now and then in my relationships. She noted that a key reason that people become defensive during conflict is that their inner…

Can You Trust a Life of Fun?

During my late teens, each time I got caught shoplifting and had to deal with the consequences, my mind would dwell on what I could have done differently. I went over and over different actions I could have taken to avoid the arrest. This helped me get better at shoplifting. Each arrest or near-arrest made…

Heartstorming

Heartstorming is brainstorming with the heart (or the emotional part of your brain). The mental kind of brainstorming is good for generating problem-solving ideas. It’s useful for mapping out the logical space of solutions. Generate lots of ideas, and sift through them to pick the best ones. That kind of brainstorming, however, is terrible for…

What Is a Spiritual Perspective?

A spiritual perspective on some area of life asks questions like these: What is my current relationship with this part of life? How would I like my relationship with this part of life to be? If you remove the physicality from life, what remains is energy. But energy alone is meaningless. What brings meaning to…

Goals of Being

Many years ago one of my goals for public speaking was to design and deliver my own three-day workshop on the Las Vegas Strip. I first achieved that goal in 2009. That was a goal of doing. Another goal I had for public speaking was to develop such strong comfort with public speaking that I…