The Thinker
We can learn ‘positive thinking’ and have a holy ego. But that won’t help as much as connecting to the present moment in meaningful ways.Read more
Unlock Your Potential
Our egocentric thinking causes us to be rigid and experience conflict, whereas more fluid thinking releases the most capable version of us.Read more
You Are Not Alone
We’ve all seen happy people in during tough times. They aren’t special, they’ve just learned how to find life’s rewards in all situations.Read more
Stay Tuned
What if we saw reality even more accurately and realistically than we do now, and that vison left us happier, and genuinely more positive?Read more
Lost in the Words
If we view our lives through the lens of ego, we can mistake our failures for successes, and our successes for failures.Read more
Fostering Humility
We grow when we learn we’re wrong about something. Rather than avoid the experience, we’d be wiser to appreciate its role in our expansion.Read more
Ambition: Drive or Discovery?
If we live in a state of ego, it is possible to be plagued by Hedonic adaptation, when it provably doesn’t even exist in reality.Read more
Helpless Hope
There are times in life where there is little we can do but hope. In those instances, it’s important to maintain a healthy mental state.Read more
Casual Hate
Some people don’t trust corporations, and others don’t trust the government. But in reality, that’s us saying we don’t trust each other.Read more
Greener Grass
Being famous means other people love us in their heads. That does not do us as much good as loving ourselves in our own heads.Read more
The Unicorn of Feelings
No amount of external success will make our lives feel as great as if we’d just had a small but aware life, with a LOT of laughing in it.Read more
The Weight of the Past
Do not take carry the wishes, troubles, or regrets of your past into your future. Their value is in experiencing them, not re-living them.Read more
Facing Our Past
My happy students often need time to find new ways to engage with relationships that formerly included a lot of negativity.Read more
Failing Up
If we allow it, by finding ourselves unable to become the people we admire, we slowly evolve into being our true selves.Read more
The Other Stuff
Reality demands either enacting a solution or accepting a situation. Worry is us delaying the choice between those two options.Read more
Idols Are Not People
Bob Ross let no one down by being a human being. We let him down by trying to pretend that he wasn’t just like the rest of us.Read more
The Embodiment of Mental Health
Knowing psychological concepts is helpful in many ways. But those are about other times, places, and people. A practice happens in the Now.Read more
Genres For Living
Don’t judge. Look for the best in yourself and in others. That alone represents a reliable way to create more of what we value.Read more
An Angry Society
Angry people are afraid of something. We don’t repair that by forcing them to think like us. We help them by allaying their fear.Read more
Grown Ups
We tend to harshly judge our parents and their parenting because we often forget that they were still growing up while doing it.Read more
Emotional Influences
Accepting that no one always has emotional control is what allows us to have a high degree of emotional control.Read more
Raising Children
Language that teaches kids to hate themselves for normal mistakes is like teaching them to be anxious, stressed, perfection-seeking adults.Read more
Emergency Awareness
It is easier and more rewarding to go through a difficult experience consciously, than it is to have an average experience unconsciously.Read more
Breeds of Personality
Under stress, people will often resort to whatever skills worked as a child –even if those responses appear unhealthy to others.Read more
Parenting Wisdom
We must not be so intent on raising a well-behaved citizen that we fail to teach kids about self respect and the joys of living.Read more
Brain Fog Recovery
Our brains were stressed by adapting to manage our COVID reality. Managed poorly, we can also be stressed our return to a ‘renewed normal.’Read more
The Waiting Game
Life will threaten both our wants and our needs. In the latter case, overthinking can be compelling. But it is also unhealthy and dangerous.Read more
The Phase Shifter
Life includes inevitable changes. These natural changes can turn into tragedies if we do not understand how to manage our consciousness.Read more
Asking For Help
Don’t be shy about asking for compassion when it’s needed. It teaches kids that challenges are normal, and that most people are decent and caring.Read more
Today on CBC Radio Active: The Appreciation of Normal
Before COVID we all took a lot for granted. Now that it’s over, we need to find ways to assure ourselves that we won’t lose sight of that value again.Read more
A Lesson in Failure
We can painfully wish to be who we are not. Or, we can happily accept ourselves as we are. The choices is always ours.Read more
The Smile Economy
With little human contact for over a year, even smartphones aren’t keeping us from being present with others. Let’s keep that practice up.Read more
Advice vs. Understanding
We can tell advice-seekers what we’d do based on our experience. Or, we can explain how reality works and dissolve their ‘problem.’Read more
Today on CBC Radio Active
Yesterday’s CBC Column was deferred to today. Tune in. We’ll be discussing the hidden sources of power that reside in all of us.Read more
The Power of Belief
Some days we feel powerful, other days we feel weak. What is the difference, and how can that help us be more powerful in our own lives?Read more
The Course: The Principles of Human Experience
How does a person who has never believed their thoughts teach others how to see through what the Buddha called ‘the illusion?’Read more
Waking Up To Death
Can a young woman’s death teach us how to live a full and rich life? Can it show us the most common ways we steal that from ourselves?Read more
Shinrin-Yoku with Scott
Mindfulness training can figuratively and literally be like going on a beautiful and intriguing walk through nature.Read more
Today on CBC’s Radio Active: Playoff Heartbreak
As painful as it is to lose in a playoff elimination game, there is a gift hidden in the experience. And it is well worth the price.Read more
Give Yourself Some Credit
We can all make unflattering comparisons between ourselves and others. But we grow by focusing on our achievements.Read more
Taking Off
If we’re not careful, our own thinking can trap our spirit in place. That can lead us to live lives that are beneath us.Read more
Pain and Indifference
When my vaccine wasn’t there for my appointment, I got a useful lesson about the pain of indifference, vs the value of belonging.Read more
Managing Rejection
Professionally, socially, personally –getting rejected hurts. That’s why it’s a really good idea to have ways to manage it when it happens.Read more
The HAL 901E Mindset Evaluator
What if we could reliably predict our mindset? Would we resign ourselves to it, or would we find practices to overcome it?Read more
Managing Uncertainty
Without good psychological tools, our desire for certainty during stressful times can lead us to believe baseless, convenient ideas.Read more
Environmental Anxiety
The problems each generation faces are always enormous. But our track record is excellent, and there are good reasons to be optimistic.Read more
Dating in a Post-COVID world
We get attracted to people’s qualities. But what holds healthy relationships together is how well we manage our partner’s imperfections.Read more
Love as Motivation
The current COVID-19 vaccine roll-out is the largest exercise in shared compassion the world has ever known.Read more
Listen to Yourself
They are worth paying attention to because our words and how we choose to use them are direct reflections of how we see the world.Read more
Our We-Me Nature
Our cooperative and competitive natures are constantly in flux and cannot be balanced. At our best we simply allow them to flow.Read more
Model Parents
Parents teach children many things, including how to be angry. That being the case, we may want to re-think our approach to those lessons.Read more
The COVID Effect
Pandemic living creates specific types of stresses for our brains and we are better off if we actively manage our responses.Read more
The Power of Thought
In life, it only detracts from our ability to develop solutions if we add excess psychological stress to our mandatory physiological stress.Read more
Game Face
Egos travel like tourists, uncertain in foreign lands. Our spirits own our days by being, conscious, intentional and prepared for action.Read more
A Life of Potential
As atoms beholding atoms, we all carry within us the potential for many lives. The one we live will be the one we choose.Read more
Confirmation Bias
We must learn to see past our own inevitable biases if we want to be able to see ourselves, others and the world more honestly.Read more
A Special Offer
We must not only learn how to give support. We must learn how to accept support from others, too.Read more
The Contents Of Our Hearts
Our lives are not the external outcomes we generate over many moments, our lives flow through each moment as the content of our hearts.Read more
What Artists Can Teach Us About Work
Artists perpetually create something from nothing. That ability requires a kind of work ethic that any type of worker can benefit from.Read more
Shattered Lives
A terrible murder in a local high school has everyone searching for ways to process their pain and make sense of this tragedy.Read more
Monday Mantra
Do not load a week identity in at the start of week. Instead, be conscious and load your strongest self.Read more
Layered Reality
There is a very logical reason to explain why totally different people would go through the same process of becoming healthier.Read more
Limiting Identities
What if the problem isn’t you? What if it really is the world? And what if you can change the world? Wouldn’t that change you as well?Read more
Saving Yourself
If we are present, there are either things to be accepted or solutions we can enact. But either way, no truly present person has a ‘problem.’Read more
The Happy Zookeeper
If we are in alignment with our role in life, we can be in the midst of amazing chaos and yet we can still feel centered and positive.Read more
Up In The Air
This post is merely an announcement regarding Mom’s health and a deferred post.Read more
To Social Media or Not To Social Media
Humans have many modes of connection. But we must consider them consciously before we can know which ones benefit us most.Read more
Working With Passion
Rather than becoming a success at some random role, why not start as a successful person who instead discovers their own role?Read more
Alignment
There are crucial clues about living a healthy life, hidden in the fact that people routinely do difficult and apparently unrewarding things.Read more
An Easy Life Is Not The Good Life
When providing pandemic care for those with dementia, greater awareness can turn that complex and unpleasant task into something rewarding.Read more
Exhaustion
Self-care is a critical part of caring for others. Our care must come from love, not obligation, and that love must also include ourselves.Read more
Arenas of Thought
A look into how I used a video game to create a sense of activity and community for my parents with dementia.Read more
Revisiting the Pavlovian Eater
If we want to have better control over our eating, we need to gain more control over our thoughts about eating.Read more
Healthy States of Mind
Our bodies are listening. We should listen back, and then ensure that we are having a healthy, productive conversation.Read more
Struggles and Rewards
Egos are like dogs chasing cars. They like the chase, but if they catch the car they will be lost and depressed, until the next new chase.Read more
THIS Morning
Future loves, best friends, connections to valued groups. They often happen unexpectedly, which is why every day deserves our full attention.Read more
Inherent Goodness
As this stunning example demonstrates, as humans we often fail to recognize our own remarkable qualities and/or our significant actions.Read more
Memory and Imagination: Friends or Foes?
Our memories are included in a feedback loop. When the feedback is bad, we are being prompted to alter the loop.Read more
The Reality Generator
Our memories are like a knife that can cut in two directions. They can build us up or destroy us. They should not be managed arbitrarily.Read more
Theatre of the Mind
Pandemics are hard. If we’re trapped in an anxious state, this exercise can help us shift our narrative to something more positive.Read more
Ideological Realities
We can fight over what we see as the truth. Or we can find what we agree we have in common and then work from there.Read more
Guilt vs Shame
One helps steer our ego. The other helps steer our soul.Read more
Seeking vs. Finding Life
Good lives are found more than sought. And they are discovered more often than they are consciously created. Find yours today.Read more
Routine Meditations
We don’t have experiences that result in emotions. We have thoughts about those experiences that result in emotions.Read more
The Positivity Perspective
Nothing generates more good feelings than being more conscious about what we choose to think about, and how we choose to think about it.Read more
Contraction and Expansion
We can focus on personal thoughts which serve to make us smaller, or on the world itself, which expands us. Where our attention flows, our life will go.Read more
The Identity Rut
We awaken free, then quickly build limits in our mind. It is a healthy thing to become more aware of what those limits are and why they are there.Read more
Scientific Spirituality
The physics of energy and elements becomes the chemistry of compounds, some of which combine to form infinite variations of biology and matter.Read more
What Is Your Health Identity?
We all have silent ‘health identities’ that can lead us to believe we are both healthier, AND sicker, than we really are.Read more
Intentional Attention
Reality can be painfully random. Or it can become a positive intention, chosen from the hidden potential in everyone’s daily life.Read more
Perspectives on Identity
Everyone is worthy, and yet none of us will never feel acceptable to others until we feel acceptable to ourselves.Read more
Resolution Assignment 10
If we want the remainder of our lives to be as good or better than what we’ve already experienced then that will only happen if we actively intend it to.Read more
Resolution Assignment 9
A year into the pandemic, even healthy people are struggling. These three assignments are designed to incite positivity in our lives.Read more
Resolution Assignment 8
Three short meditations designed to explore the boundaries between ourselves, others, and what we perceive as the ‘external world.’Read more
Resolution Assignment 7
We have more influence over our reality than we give ourselves credit for. But with great power comes great responsibility.Read more
Resolution Assignment 6
The way to feel better about ourselves is to forget about who we think we are, and to focus instead on on the good we’ve done.Read more
Resolution Assignment 5
This meditation is designed to remind us that the world is filled with good and decent people –including us.Read more
Resolution Assignment 4
These 3 short, simple meditations all call upon different aspects of our sense of generosity.Read more
Resolution Assignment 3
These meditations may appear insignificant, but they are changing habitual reactions into conscious ones. That alone makes all the difference in the world.Read more
COVID Meets Mindfulness
COVID’s created a surprising grouping. When people talk about being stressed, and they fail to reach out for help, it’s often these people.Read more