Thinks I find along the way
In this keynote address from ARC 2026, artist and public speaker Jonathan Pageau delivers a profound philosophical warning about the unchecked trajectory of artificial intelligence, framing our current technological race through the lens of ancient myths and legends.
Here is a summary of the core themes and arguments from the video:
Continue reading “Who Does it Serve?”
In this episode of Prof G Conversations, host Scott Galloway interviews author, New York Times veteran, and Atlantic writer David Brooks. The discussion centers around what Brooks views as a deep-seated human and moral crisis in modern America, rather than a purely political one…
When I was in college, I was shocked to learn there were actually German POWs in the United States. This video (which you must watch on YouTube) goes into great detail on the topic.
During World War II, the United States held over 425,000 German prisoners of war (POWs) in various camps across the country. Following the capture of German soldiers, they were transported to the U.S. as part of an agreement with the Allies. The conditions in these camps varied; some were well-kept, with prisoners allowed to work on local farms or in factories, while others were stricter. Many German POWs formed friendships with their American captors, and some even chose to remain in the U.S. after the war ended. The legacy of these POWs includes a complex interplay of wartime policies, cultural exchange, and post-war integration.
My Anam Cara and I are preparing for a visit to the Emerald Isle in late October and as part of the process I was looking for films that might help her prepare for Irish culture and language. I stumbled upon this…
Continue reading “The Quiet Girl”Lately, I have been finding wisdom and refuge in Kristen Neff’s book Self-compassion [which I highly recommend!]. Here is a recent passage that resonated with me…
A great quote from Kristen Neff’s book on self-compassion which I highly recommend…
Gemma Stone writes this about our mutual friend Farhana Dhalla:
Sometimes a crisis is a summons to reconfigure our entire lives.
Even though we are resilient creatures, we are still easily hurt. There are times when living hurts. A lot.
There is purpose in pain; often life falls apart exactly when it needs to be rebuilt.
Our stories become burdensome & false.
Our defenses become exhausting & crumble.
When we are no longer able to maintain the stories and defenses that protect us, we can easily dissolve to bits.
When our lives fall apart, it’s the perfect opportunity to build something newer, truer, fuller.
When Farhana’s life crumbled, she used it as a catalyst for transformation. She courageously ventured within herself, found truth, and emerged glowing with love and light.
And that is why I rely on to her to pull me along when I’m dragging my feet and to shine some light when all I see is darkness.
Thank You for Leaving Me is being released today. Farhana’s story is a heartfelt, refreshingly real account of her journey through divorce.
If you’re moving through the end of a relationship, struggling with heartache, or questioning your relationship patterns, I’m confident this book will be helpful. If you’re hesitant, check out this video. If this sounds like the medicine you need, head over here to pick up her book.
Kudos, Farhana! For the book and a life well lived in the face of overwhelming hardship…
I didn’t know what it looked like either until I read this book. I knew what it looked like to be unheathily attached — it looked like codependency. I knew what it looked like to be unheathily detached — it looked like ‘eff you — I’m taking my marbles and leaving’. If you struggle with either being overly detached or attached, this book will help evision what healthy dependency looks like…
Karen Salmansohn shares a cute, but powerful, perspective that I wanted to share with you this morning:
Self sabotaging behavior often is a sign of low self esteem.
Or I guess that would be “elf esteem,” because it’s low esteem.
Okay, about as low as this joke! Although addictions are no joke. I am however a big believer if we can laugh at ourselves, we can loosen our ego’s grasp on tightly held beliefs, and we’re more open to change.
I’d like to help you loosen your ego’s grasp on maintaining addictions, and change over to more healthful behavior.
How?
If you want to break an addiction, you must heighten your low “elf-esteem” to high self esteem.
Interestingly, in studies on happiness the happiest people are those with high self esteem.
And just as interestingly, the happiest people are reported to be those who do consistent acts of altruism.
There’s a do-good-feel-good-do-good-feel-good cause and effect.
My belief: the more good you do for others, the more you raise your self esteem, and the better you feel about yourself, and so the more you want to do good, and on and on the upward cycle goes.
Ironically, the more you do your addiction, the worst you feel about yourself, and the lower your elf esteem, then the more you seek your addiction, which further lowers your elf esteem, and downward do you go.
In other words, you create a do-bad-feel-bad-do-bad-feel-bad cause and effect.
YOUR ASSIGNMENT: If you have a bad habit you’re trying to break, start by doing more positive habits: donate time in an old age home or read to the blind. Of course “elf esteem” also comes from deeper subconscious forces that you need to delve into as well – and I suggest you do some delving. But it’s a good jump start to loving yourself more if you start to do more good in the world – so you can feel what a powerful spirit you can be – thereby you start to believe more in the awesome goodness inside you!
And keep in mind the words of Abraham Lincoln: “Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
Aren’t you worthy of happiness?” via Where do addictions come from? “Elf Esteem”! Karen Salmansohn.
We take care of what we value. Value your self…
“Good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results; bad thoughts and actions can never produce good results. This is but saying that nothing can come from corn but corn, nothing from nettles but nettles. Men understand this law in the natural world, and work with it, but few understand it in the mental and moral world, and they, therefore; do not cooperate with it. Suffering is always the effect of wrong thought in some direction. It is an indication that the individual is out of harmony with himself, with the Law of his being. The sole and supreme use of suffering is to purify, to burn out all that is useless and impure.”
– James Allen, page 9 from his book “As A Man Thinketh”. Allen was a philosophical writer of British nationality known for his inspirational books and poetry.” via Today’s Quotes: Get Back Into Harmony With YOU!.
I teach my students and clients that one should look for the best three paragraphs when curating; occasionally I say it’s OK to double dip and grab two quotes. When it comes to Kute Blackson, I usually break all my rules – his stuff is sooo good that I usually end up curating his entire post to that it’s easier for you to read the whole think. Today is no exception to the Kute Blackson rule:
Most guru’s or teachers will teach how to avoid suffering. I am going to share with you the seven steps of how to successfully create suffering in your life, so that you can be aware of them and make different choices.
Suffering can become a very dangerous addiction. An unhealthy way to feel. An ultimately unfulfilling way to feel alive. You can get so used to suffering that it becomes comfortable and familiar. Suffering is the ego’s way of feeling important.
Whether you are a businessman or a buddha, pain is inevitable. There is no way to avoid it. Just by virtue of being in a human body there will be some pain. Trying to avoid pain will only create more suffering. Embrace pain to release yourself from suffering.
Suffering is optional. Suffering is a choice.
Suffering comes from your story about what is happening in your life and less about what is actually happening. What is happening is simply what is happening. The suffering part comes from all your interpretations and meanings about the experience. Change your story and the way you are interpreting reality and you begin to change your reality. When you change your reality within yourself, you shift your experience of your reality outside. Once you understand this, you only suffer if you chose to.
What stories are you making up about yourself, your life, your partner, your current experience that is causing you suffering?
The Seven Keys to creating suffering:
1- Resist everything: Resist what is. Resist reality. Fight against what is happening in your life with all your might. This is a guaranteed method to suffer.
Key Solution: Accept what is, so that you can then decide how to shift it.
2- Holding the belief: “The experience that is happening to me should not be happening to me. I should be having some other experience than the one I am having. This shouldn’t be happening to me”. You have probably heard yourself doing some version of this. It just keeps you stuck.
Key Solution: Embrace your current experience. Your current experience is the experience that you are meant to be having because you are having it right now. Trust, and focus on what you can learn and how you can grow. The experience is here to help you evolve.
3- Focusing on all the things that you cannot control. This will only cause you to feel completely helpless and disempowered. It will leave you in a state of worry and anxiety. Some of us are professional “worriers”. No matter how much you worry, it doesn’t actually change the situation. Once you are done worrying, the situation will be the same. Worrying is a waste of time.
Key Solution: Focus on what you can control. Take actions that are in your power, step by step.
4- Refusing to change. Keep doing the same over and over and hoping for a different result. Well, as Einstein said, this is the definition of insanity. Are you so set in your ways that you are afraid of giving up the known suffering for the unknown possibility of happiness?
Key Solution: Embrace change. Be willing to do something different. Let go. Go into the unknown. Take different actions.
5- Give up your responsibility: Be a victim. Play the blame game, making everyone else at fault or responsible for your life and how you feel. Unless you take responsibility for your current experience, then you are powerless to change it.
Key Solution: Take full responsibility for your current reality and decide what changes you are committed to making. Give up blame.
6- Focus on everything that is wrong in your life. Whether a relationship or person. When you focus on what is wrong, you will surely find what is wrong. You will end up creating more of what is wrong to feel wrong about. Then the negative cycle continues.
Key Solution: Start focusing on what you are grateful for. Remember all your blessings, and appreciate that daily. What you appreciates, expands. What you thank about comes about.
7- Denial: Lie to yourself and others. Pretend that everything is fine when you know that it isn’t. When you avoid facing what is, you end up staying stuck and repeating the same patterns of pain and relationship. This only ends up prolonging your suffering.
Key Solution: Tell the truth to yourself first. Tell the truth to those in your life. Be honest. Face reality.
Life is too short to waste spent suffering. Most of what you worry about today, you won’t even remember a few months from now. Most of what you are trying to change in people today, you won’t care about on your deathbed.
You hold the padlock and you hold the key to your freedom.
I’m not a perfect person
There’s many things I wish I didn’t do
But I continue learning
I never meant to do those things to you
And so, I have to say before I go
That I just want you to know
I’ve found a reason for me
To change who I used to be
A reason to start over new
And the reason is you
I’m sorry that I hurt you
It’s something I must live with everyday
And all the pain I put you through
I wish that I could take it all away
And be the one who catches all your tears
That’s why I need you to hear
I’ve found a reason for me
To change who I used to be
A reason to start over new
And the reason is you
And the reason is you
And the reason is you
And the reason is you
I’m not a perfect person
I never meant to do those things to you
And so I have to say before I go
That I just want you to know
I’ve found a reason for me
To change who I used to be
A reason to start over new
And the reason is you
I’ve found a reason to show
A side of me you didn’t know
A reason for all that I do
And the reason is you
“Your excuses get you nowhere.
They just keep you where you already are.
We tend to make so many excuses for why we don’t follow our dreams and visions. Most of them seem quite legitimate and reasonable. But if you want to fulfill your dream, you have to be a little unreasonable.
If you listen to your mind’s made up excuses, it will keep you paralyzed and procrastinating forever.
If you listen to those naysayers, it will cost you your dreams and waste your precious time.
So, what excuses are you making for not pursuing your dream?
I don’t have enough time.
I don’t know how.
I don’t have the right connections.
I don’t have enough money.
I have to many real responsibilities to take care of.
I understand you have responsibilities in life. A mortgage. A job. Children. All well and great. Just make sure you don’t allow them to stop you from following your real heart’s vision. Sometimes due to our fear of stepping into our greatness or next level, we will unconsciously create structures in our life to be responsible for as a way to stay busy or to self-sabotage our ability to move forward with our dream. All this does is keep you trapped doing what you think you need to do to survive, rather than following your dream. It’s a sneaky trap.” via How I Met Steven Spielberg…Your Excuses Get You Nowhere. Commitment Is The Key!.
You Know What to Do
You’re fat. You know what to do. There’s not really a new book that will change it. It’s you who will change it.
You’re unemployed. That’s temporary, even if temporary is stretching into 14 months. You know what you need, even if that means education, a move, a change of circumstances. But I promise you that you know.
You’re broke. Money exchanges hands every day. More money than we’ll ever earn in a lifetime flows all around you. You can find ways to have some of it. You know some of those ways. Very few books or speeches will amaze you and set you on a path to claim them all.
Then Why Do We Read and Overstudy?
Because we’re afraid, because we’re procrastinating, because we feel many emotions that “seem” like uncertainty, but are more often good old fashioned lack of self-esteem. Because we’ve tried and failed one too many times and we’re upset with ourselves for this. Because we listen to our Inner Critic and we believe that He or She is right (is yours a male or female?).
Why do I read and overstudy? Because I’m not confident I’m good enough yet the things I read resonate with what I already believe. How short a distance would it be from consuming to producing with what I already know?
You’d be surprised to know how many emails I get where people are stuck in their lives.
They’re broke, or unmotivated, or in a job they hate, or they can’t find their passion, or they can’t get motivated to get healthy.
And they don’t know where to start.
It hurts to read these emails. It brings back to life the pain I lived through not too many years ago, when I too was stuck.
I know the feeling of despair when you are unhappy with your life and don’t know how to change. When you’ve tried lots of changes, but couldn’t find the discipline to make them stick. When you feel crappy about yourself because you know you should get off your butt and start improving your life, but you’d rather put it off for another day.
Problems go away when you ignore them, right?
I also know that there is really only one way out of this mire of despair.
It’s to take an action, no matter how tiny.
You don’t need to fix everything in your life right now. You don’t even need to fix one thing.
You just need to do one little, miniscule, almost nothing thing.
Make a list. Go outside and take a walk. Get rid of some of your junk food. Clear off your kitchen table. Cancel something tomorrow so you can make time to create something, no matter how small.
Don’t do all of these. Do one. Or half of one, or one thousandth. It doesn’t matter how small — the smaller, the better.
Take that first step. Celebrate that first step. Love the step, not the destination. That step, even the motion of taking the first foot off the ground and moving it forward — that’s everything.
That’s the truth, and you’ll not read it in many self-help books: put every microparticle of your existence into that half step, and be nothing but that half step, and love it with all you have … and your life has changed.
With this half step, everything is different. You haven’t achieved any goals … but you’ve moved. You haven’t created something amazing … and yet, more than ever before, you have.
You’ve created beauty and joy and movement where none existed before, where previously only constriction and paralysis and confusion lived. You have changed the world.
h/t my buddy Steve…
“Be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. Talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet. Make all your friends feel there is something special in them. Look at the sunny side of everything. Think only of the best, work only for the best, and expect only the best. Be as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own. Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. Give everyone a smile. Spend so much time improving yourself that you have no time left to criticize others. Be too big for worry and too noble for anger.”
– Christian D. Larsen, Larsen was a New Thought leader and teacher, as well as a prolific author of metaphysical and New Thought books.
“Live out of your imagination, not your history.”
– Stephen Covey, wrote the best-selling book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
Bright, shiny objects! 
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