All (by date)

My Struggle with Complex PTSD

Since returning from a psilocybin-assisted retreat in Jamaica, many aspects of my life have begun to shift. Not only has there been massive changes in my family, with issues going back thirty years…

5 min read | 106 claps

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Mushrooms Freed Me From The Hell of Self-Consciousness

Cindy and I returned from our psilocybin-assisted retreat in Jamaica a couple of weeks ago, and, supported by our ongoing group chat and our first group integration video call yesterday, the changes…

7 min read | 75 claps

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Psychedelic Mushrooms in Jamaica: The Ultimate Vacation

Cindy I returned from Jamaica just over a week ago. Arriving in what seems like a different world, a world of greater benevolence and greatly increased possibilities. Both of us have been relieved of…

7 min read | 73 claps

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I See People As Animals

A while back I read an open question from a friend on social media: “how do you see other people?” I guess possible answers could include: as spiritual beings having a human experience (hear me…

3 min read | 73 claps

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What Are Boundaries?

For me, setting boundaries means noticing and honoring my own needs in relationship. My default behavior is to be acutely aware of what others need, or might need, and to take action to ensure that…

2 min read | 32 claps

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Meditation Makes Me Angry

“Wow. I’ve never heard anyone say that before,” She said, “relaxed, a little high, but not irritated.” We talked about my meditation practice and about how sometimes my meditation sessions leave me…

3 min read | 67 claps

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The Day “I” Died.

It’s been on a long, weird, and often painful journey since the awakening happened in 2001, when I was 27. Sitting in that room in Mountain View, California (the city were Google’s HQ is) I focused…

3 min read | 244 claps

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I Can Finally Ask For What I Need Without Feeling Ashamed

This morning, Cindy and I went to a Korean spa. We each got scrubbed vigorously with salt and then deeply massaged. After that, we began our relaxing cycles of hot, dry sauna followed by immersion in…

7 min read | 13 claps

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My Struggle to Sit With Discomfort

I have a memory of being a baby and crying in my crib, wanting, needing to be comforted by my mum. Perhaps I had woken from a nightmare. I cried and cried, getting louder and louder. Somehow, I knew…

6 min read | 219 claps

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Some Thoughts About the Law of Attraction

Here are some thoughts that I recently recorded to share with my son as I introduce him to the law of attraction. I am hoping that he, you, I, we all can learn to utilize the law of attraction more…

5 min read | 83 claps

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Mental Discipline Is Foundational for Mental Health

According to the data from my Garmin watch, I awoke at 3:28 am last night. I can also see that I had the night’s first short burst of REM (dreaming) sleep only a few minutes earlier, starting at 3:15…

6 min read | 153 claps

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How to Develop a Winning Mindset

I support many people in becoming more successful in life. While I’ve taught many practical skills (such as organization), I have also come to realize that perhaps the most impactful factor is…

6 min read | 74 claps

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What I Learned From Crowdfunding A Film

I started writing this article last week, and, as I wrote, it mutated into a heartfelt expression of our need to address the injustice in our society related to the insidious, often sexual, violence…

15 min read | 52 claps

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To Become Wealthy, First Learn to Respect Wealth

“I understand that you really need this laptop,” I said to Bill, “and so I’m willing you help you out. I’ll pay for a new MacBook Pro for you.” Bill smiled with relief, realizing that this tool that…

6 min read | 95 claps

What I’ve Learned From Begging For Money

First of all, it’s not begging. It’s giving others the opportunity to partner with us in making the world a better place. It really fucking is. We have such powerfully embedded limiting beliefs…

3 min read | 101 claps

What’s Happening Is Uncleavable

I get so many emails and messages about this, and I feel like I’m continually answering the same question. What’s happening is all there is. It’s wholeness and fulfillment. There’s nothing beyond it…

5 min read | 59 claps

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Remembering My Childhood Computers

Readers have asked me how I became a software engineer. As I started to write about that, I realized that the first thing I really want tell you about is the computers I had as a kid. I was lucky…

6 min read | 2 claps

What I Love About Ice Baths

The nurse took the temperature under my tongue. "Your temperature if 93°F! That’s not good," She said. Normal body temperature is 98.6F. The life-threatening emergency medical condition known as…

7 min read | 82 claps

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Why Self-Directed Investors Can Massively Outperform Professional Money Managers (part 2)

Hi! You might want to begin by reading part one, if you haven’t already. Now, let’s get right back into looking at even more asymmetries that favor the self-directed investor over professional money…

8 min read | 30 claps

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Why Self-Directed Investors Can Massively Outperform Professional Money Managers (part 1)

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve revealed to you how I learned to invest (see part one and part two). Now I wish to address a topic that often comes up in discussions about investing. The person…

8 min read | 40 claps

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How I Learned to Invest (part 2)

This is a follow-on to part one, from last week, in which I covered my path into, and through, index investing. This week, I’ll explain how I became a more capable and sophisticated investor. After…

7 min read | 36 claps

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How I Learned to Invest (Part 1)

I made millions of dollars from being an early employee of NVIDIA, the company that develops the GPUs that are accelerating the current AI-revolution. Though it’s now the eighth largest company in…

9 min read | 140 claps

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He Beat My Brother with a Spade While I Did My Engineering Job

I’ve struggled with procrastination all my life and now my 18-year-old son is struggling with it too. I was on the phone with him for five hours yesterday, loving every second of our time together…

9 min read | 55 claps

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How I Keep My Inboxes Empty

Having an empty inbox, or achieving "inbox zero" as some people refer to it, seems to be a holy grail, a mythical situation that is unattainable in the real world, a hypothetical freedom only…

12 min read | 60 claps

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Kilimanjaro, Ketamine, and Crying

All of a sudden there was a crow. It was squawking loud, rough, painful “caw, caw, caw” sounds, vibrations that grated against something inside me. The angular shape of the bird was clear to my…

19 min read | 3 claps

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Return From a Ten-Year Vacation

I’ve often thought that my life would make an epic, roller-coaster ride of a novel … for accountants. So, I took a ten-year vacation. It just seems like such a boring thing to write about, like how I…

10 min read | 195 claps

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How I Integrated My Trauma

The little boy stepped onto the boat with one foot while he left the other foot on the muddy bank. While the adults were distracted, the boat started to move away from the shore. A sense of panic…

8 min read | 134 claps

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My Journey Out of Anxiety

Recently, some immensely stressful experiences both in work and in my personal life effectively forced me to start very actively taking care of my mental and physical health. It was just not…

8 min read | 274 claps

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How I Open My Heart With Gratitude Letters

I was on a five-day, solo backpacking adventure in Yosemite National Park, listening to Guy Spier’s book The Education of a Value Investor (paid link) when I felt the inspiration to start writing letters of…

7 min read | 53 claps

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Mischievous. Loud. Caw-caw. I screech my truth; all that matters. Primal, confident, sacred, profane. Screeching out clear and gruff commands: "Stay back; make space; this is mine." It cannot be…

2 min read | 132 claps

How I Tie Myself in Knots

I’ve not been doing well recently. I’ve been feeling overwhelmed, depressed, and anxious. Yesterday, I posted the following on Facebook: This generated an outpouring of love and support from my…

3 min read | 6 claps

Smile For Me: How Fragile Masculinity Undermines Our Society

Cindy and I were walking along a street in Central London, her a few steps ahead of me. She passed into the view of two lads in their twenties who were standing on the steps of a house. I was still…

7 min read | 608 claps

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Ten-Day Vipassana Retreats: An Old Student's Perspective

As I write this, I’ve attended a Goenka-style ten-day Vipassana retreat four times, which makes me an “old student.” These retreats represent industrial-grade meditation training and practice…

6 min read | 73 claps

Why I Don’t Believe in Consciousness

I’ve lost friends over this because a denial of consciousness undermines a final refuge of the arrogance of selfhood: universal consciousness. But even most normal people are strongly insistent that…

6 min read | 768 claps

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Mentioned: Mind Matters

What I See as Effective Coaching

A coaching session is something that tends to happen when I reach a point in my life at which I realize that I’ve been trying to get to some new level of performance or success and that to get there…

2 min read | 93 claps

There’s No Need for Pitchforks

We have cokes in the fridge. We have red vines. Don’t eat too many or your head will get kind of buzzy. Remember to exercise every day, or most days, or at least sometimes. Or at least intend to exercise.

3 min read | 150 claps

How to Rubber Duck Debug Your Life

We get blocked in life, and not only when trying to write. We get blocked when there is something that needs to be made conscious and expressed that is held inside and not allowed out. When we’re…

4 min read | 415 claps

Medium curated under WRITING MINDFULNESS

How I Finally Got Control of My Money

"I have to thank you for something," my therapist said to me as we were about to sign off at the end of a session.

11 min read | 18 claps

Memories of My Father

Towards the end of his career, my father was a TV producer at the British Broadcasting Corporation, also known as the BBC. He produced popular UK science and technology shows like Tomorrow’s World…

6 min read | 10 claps

Coronavirus: The Scary Numbers

I published an article yesterday in which I estimated that the total number of people who will have died from Covid-19 by April 26, 2020, could be as high as 213,504. A friend pointed out to me that…

3 min read | 17 claps

Coronavirus: The Hidden Numbers

As I write this, on March 29, 2020, according to the World Health Organization, there have been 634,835 confirmed cases of Covid-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, leading to 29,891…

3 min read | 31 claps

Quale Is All There Is

A quale is a single instance of what we call a subjective experience, the experience that is pointed to by phrases such as 'seeing red,' 'tasting coffee,' or 'feeling sad.'' The plural form of this word might be slightly more familiar to some people: qualia.

2 min read | 155 claps

Medium curated under PHILOSOPHY

Is Reality, as We Know It, a Simulation?

It seems to be fashionable right now to ponder whether we are living in a simulation. Tech moguls have been reported to do it in hot tubs. I’m doing it at 6 am in an Airbnb in Marin County. Before…

5 min read | 6 claps

This Is Not Your Dad’s Org Chart

I was sitting in the reclining leather chair in my therapist’s office receiving support with some struggles I’ve been having at work. I told her that even though we tell the story that the company…

5 min read | 118 claps

Give Up. You’re Never Going to Arrive

A few nights ago, I was mentoring a younger version of myself. He’s about 15 years younger than me, and driven, and wanting to make a name for himself in the world. When he started at the company…

2 min read | 208 claps

He Made Me Eat off the Floor When I Was Eight

In Some Snapshots from My Shitty Childhood, I wrote briefly about being forced, as a child, to eat directly from the floor. I’ll go more deeply into that memory here, and I’ll show you how I was…

7 min read | 1.7K claps

Medium curated under FAMILY

How I Trick Myself into Writing Every Day

I love the process of writing. I love expressing my thoughts and then clarifying and sharing them. I love inspiring people. I’ve even already done pretty well at making a name for myself as an…

2 min read | 85 claps

This piece of writing is all about words, but not any words. It’s only about the words that are appropriate. I’m attempting to convey to you the importance of selection. As I write, each word falls…

2 min read | 88 claps

Think Before Doing

I’m going to tell you about a powerful idea that keeps showing up for me. This idea has helped me enormously in my life. In a nutshell, we often get stuck not knowing what to do because we don’t…

FEATURED ON MEDIUM

8 min read | 169 claps

Medium curated under SOFTWARE ENGINEERING PRODUCTIVITY

Republished: The Coach

How to Always Crush a Job Interview

I have a fresh, alive, and powerful conversation with with at least one person every day. I have all my lunches at work scheduled out for months. I have breakfast meetings, coffee meetings, and…

3 min read | 168 claps

Medium curated under WORK

Your Non-Adaptive Behavior Serves an Important Purpose

I have a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, which means that I’ve spent a lot of time learning how to sit with people and support them in self-awareness and self-directed-change. Since completing my…

5 min read | 163 claps

How Can Everything Include What Is Not?

What is written here is not logical. These words are not coming from an experience or from some kind of conceptual understanding. What is written about is neither experienced nor understood…

2 min read | 36 claps

What Is Enlightenment?

I recently received a comment on an article I wrote about why I Will Never Be Enlightened. I get a lot of great feedback and comments on all my articles, but one of them stood out to me in…

2 min read | 259 claps

Medium curated under PHILOSOPHY

What Actually Is Humility?

A lot of people who call themselves spiritual teachers talk about humility as a virtue to aspire to. In my experience, it seems that humility gets talked about often in this way but remains a vague…

4 min read | 157 claps

Medium curated under MINDFULNESS

My Sweet Friendship with No One

We just got back from Europe, and we’re recovering from ten hours on a plane and an eight hour shift in timezones. Apart from spending time in central London and Paris, and with my family, we also…

5 min read | 16 claps

A Plausible Path to a Push-Button AI Apocalypse

Before we get into the horrors of artificially intelligent dystopias, I want to reassure you that I’m an AI optimist. I, for one, welcome our benevolent yet super-intelligent robot overlords, our…

12 min read | 57 claps

Why Shame Stifles Creativity and How to Unwrap the Gift of Curiosity

Over the past week, Cindy and I have been staying in the Marais district of Paris, wandering around, living like locals. Perhaps, because I have more time on my hands than usual, when something has…

6 min read | 189 claps

Medium curated under CREATIVITY SELF

My Click-Bait Titles Serve a Deeper Purpose

Every now and then, someone tells me that my titles are click-baity. It’s hard not to hear this as a criticism, but I have to admit that they really are. I’ve honed my skill at making click-baity…

2 min read | 197 claps

What Newly-Minted Millionaires Struggle With

I’ve written about what I learned from suddenly becoming a multi-millionaire at twenty-seven, and what I learned from gradually spending all of it in mid-life retirement. I have many friends who…

5 min read | 141 claps

We Don’t Need Personal-Growth and Self-Improvement

When I scroll through my Facebook feed or when I get involved in any discussion about mental health, I frequently experience other people talking about “personal-growth” or “self-improvement.” There…

2 min read | 153 claps

Mentioned: Narrative: Psychology Medium Well Done

Why Men Must Learn to Milk Their Urethral Bulbs

I was in the clinic where I was training to be a therapist. After taking my next client to the room where we would be talking, I left the room briefly to grab some notes and to urinate. After peeing…

4 min read | 1.2K claps

Medium curated under HEALTH

The Law of Attraction Is Simple

I was driving to Mount Shasta in California with my wife, Cindy, in the back and our friend, Dave, in the passenger seat. Dave and I talked about a lot of things, including The Work of Byron Katie…

3 min read | 171 claps

Mentioned: Empowerment

Your Most Important Relationship Is Between Your Inner-Parent and Inner-Child

My wife, Cindy, has taken part in many sharing circles. A sharing circle usually consists of one person talking about whatever they want while the others listen, don’t interrupt, and attempt to hold…

5 min read | 110 claps

Why You Should Keep Track of Your Financial Accounts, and How

I keep spreadsheets on everything, including my financial accounts. I also regularly reconcile my accounts, which means making my spreadsheets match what the statements say. There is a technique…

3 min read | 92 claps

Medium curated under MONEY

His Mother Had to Give Him up for Adoption as a Baby

I was on a video call with my friend Dan when we decided to talk about a longing that I had noticed in him. Earlier, in a post on Facebook, he had asked his friends if they would honestly reveal…

4 min read | 25 claps

Medium curated under MENTAL HEALTH SELF

Could This Ancient Ritual Be an Effective Treatment for Depression?

I’m writing this in a tent, using a pen, at the Headwaters Outdoor School. The school is in the forest near the foot of Mount Shasta, a dormant volcano and the second-highest peak in the Cascade…

3 min read | 88 claps

Meditation Is Not About Quieting the Mind

I frequently interact with people on the topic of meditation. It seems that I’ve become perceived as somewhat of an expert on this subject. This might partly be because I’ve done a ton of it myself…

4 min read | 1K claps

Medium curated under LIFESTYLE MINDFULNESS

The Healing Power of Hot and Cold Water

Cindy and I are at Harbin Hot Springs in Northern California for the long Memorial Day weekend, staying in a little caravan on this land that we had both independently loved for years before we got…

5 min read | 47 claps

Medium curated under TRAVEL SELF

How I Rewired My Brain to Be Ultra-Social

I’ve always been an introvert. As a kid, I spent many solitary hours taking things apart to figure out how they worked, making things with the limited resources that were available (like legos…

9 min read | 2.1K claps

Medium curated under PSYCHOLOGY

Silicon Valley Is Not a Fad

A 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley outlines the region’s history of technological innovation, and dispels its recent reputation as a shallow, lucrative party for tech bros.

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8 min read | 2.3K claps

Medium curated under BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY

Mentioned: Medium's Facebook page

Weird Memories from School

I used to think that my experience of middle school and high school was pretty banal. As I wrote the following memory fragments, however, I realized that perhaps it was far from normal. I was 11…

7 min read | 54 claps

For Maximum Corporate Performance: Eliminate Internal Competition

We all lined up in front of the whiteboard to so that our coach, André, could explain the workout of the day, which is called a “WOD” in CrossFit. On this day, the metabolic conditioning part of the…

10 min read | 26 claps

Everything You Need to Know About Grammar in Six Minutes

I left school at sixteen and entered technical college, the place where I learned to solder components, weld joints, and do calculus (go figure). Then I went to university and studied engineering so…

6 min read | 210 claps

Medium curated under LANGUAGE WRITING

Should Prisoners Be Allowed To Vote?

I’m writing about this topic in the context of a modern democracies in general, but I’m thinking particularly about the United States of America. This is a country that is supposed to exemplify…

5 min read | 26 claps

The Ultimate Potential of Healthy Masculinity

I’m on a plane flying back to San Jose, California from Houston, Texas. My small, blue fishing rod is in the overhead bin. A couple of days ago, on a small boat, I was piercing a hook through the…

6 min read | 125 claps

Deadlines Are Killing Us, And Almost Everything Else I Know About Leadership

This morning, I spoke with a good friend who lives in France. He started a business with his wife to develop a web-based, software-as-a-service product. As the business began to grow, his belief in…

22 min read | 1.9K claps

Medium curated under LEADERSHIP PSYCHOLOGY WORK

Mentioned: 10 Things

You Can Become Whatever You Choose

A couple of days ago, I was presenting a research poster at a machine learning conference called ScaledML. Large groups of people were gathering around my poster while I delivered ad-hoc summaries of…

6 min read | 502 claps

Medium curated under WORK

The Value of Incompetence

At work, I meet with a different person for lunch every day. I also usually have one-on-one meetings with one or two other people throughout the day. All of my lunches are scheduled out until…

6 min read | 851 claps

Medium curated under PSYCHOLOGY WORK

My First Public Tech Talk: What I’m Learning in Preparation

A while back I wrote an article titled What Standup Comedy Has Taught Me About Public Speaking and Life. That article provides a pretty comprehensive coverage of everything I know about public…

7 min read | 162 claps

Medium curated under WORK

Anxiety Is Excitement in Disguise

At five am on a recent morning, I woke to find Cindy awake next to me. “What’s going on, babe?” I asked. This got me thinking about anxiety, a topic I frequently consider. Maybe what was trying to…

3 min read | 248 claps

Why Does Parallel Parking Always Involve Reversing?

Cindy and I were driving around in the Marina District of San Francisco looking for parking when I noticed someone entering a parallel parking spot nose-first. I said to Cindy, “You know that’s going…

4 min read | 47 claps

What I Learned from My Dream Job Interview

I don’t know how it happened, but I was interviewing with a senior vice president (SVP) in the company where I currently work. I don’t remember what the role was, but I think it was in a…

5 min read | 21 claps

Why I Never Work Weekends

It’s Saturday and I just signed-off an email to a customer by adding, “Now I’m going to write an article about how I never work on weekends.” I guess it’s more true to say that I hardly ever work on…

10 min read | 460 claps

Medium curated under SELF WORK

Will Machines Ever Be Conscious?

This topic is of particular interest to me because I’m an engineer working in the field of artificial intelligence, I have a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, and I have a lot of experience with…

7 min read | 179 claps

How I Became a Writer

I’ve been writing publicly for around 13.5 years, and I decided that it’s time to take stock of where I’m at and how I got here. It was during the Summer of 2005 that I first started publishing…

8 min read | 121 claps

How to Have Compassion for Narcissists

I’ve dealt with my fair share of narcissists. There seems to be quite a few of them in the world. I’ve been gaslighted, projected-onto, and generally treated like I was made of dog shit. Many people…

4 min read | 1.5K claps

Medium curated under MENTAL HEALTH RELATIONSHIPS PSYCHOLOGY

Republished: psychology.gr (Greek translation)

I Don’t Believe in Climate Change

I was driving to work this morning with Cindy in the passenger seat next to me. I don’t know who she was referring to when she said, “it annoys me that he doesn’t believe in climate change.” I found…

2 min read | 5.1K claps

Medium curated under PHILOSOPHY

There’s No Such Thing As Ego

Very early this morning, I lay in bed with the fingers of my two hands knitted together and rested high on my chest. I was having trouble sleeping, so instead I was meditating. I started to notice a…

4 min read | 250 claps

Medium curated under MINDFULNESS

When Work Is Play

I’ve been noticing how I experience work as play. Throughout the day, I keep a list of things to do, which I then get to check-off as they are completed. If I think of something that I could or…

3 min read | 217 claps

Why the Problem of Consciousness Is so Hard

I just read a great article in The Guardian about the struggle of scientists and philosophers to understand consciousness (link at the end). The Guardian article covers the history of the quest to…

3 min read | 1K claps

Medium curated under PHILOSOPHY

What It’s like to Feel Responsible for Everything

Last night, I woke up at around two a.m. and looked around. It was very clear that all that was happening was what was apparently being witnessed: everything in my field of vision plus the thoughts…

4 min read | 139 claps

The Most Important Leadership Skill

I think a lot about leadership and how to motivate people, and I also often experiment with different approaches. It seems to me that the most important leadership skill, by far, is the ability to…

4 min read | 497 claps

Medium curated under LEADERSHIP

If I Was a Recruiter, I Would Do This

I had a long conversation with some recruiters in a bar at Lake Tahoe in Nevada recently. They told me how challenging the work is and that they never get a break because they’re always having to…

4 min read | 51 claps

My Boundaries Are My Responsibility

I’ve often heard people saying about others, “He needs to learn about boundaries,” meaning that he needs to learn not to overstep other people’s boundaries. To me, this seems like an inversion of the…

3 min read | 126 claps

Why I’ve Started Unfriending and Blocking People

I used to pride myself for never unfriending anyone on Facebook. I just wouldn’t do it. I wanted to show that I would reject no one, that I was perfectly inclusive. When things got really out of…

3 min read | 341 claps

A Pointless Poem About An Apothecary

According to tradition, affording her a mission, she takes the tincture in her sphincter, after luncheon, in a dungeon. “I know it’s scary,” says the apothecary, in her mink fur and, after a demure…

2 min read | 152 claps

Why I Cannot Be Converted To Your Religion

Every now and then someone starts trying to convert me to their religion. It’s usually either Christianity or Islam but sometimes, in a more subtle way, it’s some form of Buddhism. I wonder if there…

2 min read | 5 claps

Toxic Masculinity Says, “I’m Weak”

I watched the Gillette video about toxic masculinity and my take on it is simply that it reflects how our society is changing: The general trend is that bullying is being increasingly understood to…

5 min read | 276 claps

Time Is Not Real

Show me the past. Show me the future. The only thing that seems to be happening is the present. But without a past and future, the present is just what seems to be happening, without any context…

2 min read | 340 claps

The Principles by Which I Live My Life

Over the last couple of days, I’ve been having a conversation about politics with some friends on Facebook. That sounds like a bad idea, I know. One of these friends, who identifies as extremely…

3 min read | 167 claps

Life is Effortless

I’m writing this on my phone in a small cafe called Abraço in New York City. They don’t allow the use of laptops, so this is my only way of communicating with you. This morning I woke up late, at…

3 min read | 131 claps

There’s No Escape from Freedom

Last night, as I got into bed, Cindy said, “there’s something going on with my Boo Boo!” I was struggling again with reconciling what seems to be happening in my experience with what other people…

4 min read | 154 claps

My Struggle with Narcissistic Bullies

I don’t know why, but I seem to regularly get pulled into interactions with narcissistic bullies. They come into my world and they seem to try to invalidate my experience. Most recently, there’s a…

3 min read | 112 claps

What’s Happening Is Never a Problem

What’s happening is always simply what’s happening. It’s always completely manageable. Problems don’t arise in what is happening, except as concepts about the past or the future, which are themselves…

2 min read | 104 claps

My Strange Relationship with Yoga

I first did yoga in the late 90s. My wife-at-the-time told me about it and suggested we go together. I realized that I didn’t have appropriate shoes, so I made a point to go to the store and buy some…

9 min read | 65 claps

Medium curated under LIFESTYLE

What It’s like to Look When There’s No One Looking

Last night, Cindy and I drove to a friend’s birthday party on the other side of the Bay. On the drive there and on the drive back, I spent some of the time examining looking in more detail. At one…

3 min read | 58 claps

How I Objectify My Wife

Yesterday, I published a story called “All My Wife Needs Is Food and Cuddles” (link at the end). When I shared it on Facebook, one of my female friends, who read only the first two paragraphs…

4 min read | 174 claps

Life Is Amazing, but for No One

I was having a conversation with a friend recently about “setting intentions.” I revealed that I have been increasingly losing faith in the belief that there is any free-will and choice. I tried to…

3 min read | 357 claps

Medium curated under SELF

All My Wife Needs Is Food and Cuddles

This is an off-the-cuff, quick-start care-and-feeding guide for the wonderful woman I’m lucky enough to call my wife. I’m writing this guide in a little coffee shop in Incline Village, Nevada, near…

4 min read | 201 claps

The Law of Attraction Only Works When You Don’t Need It

I was in a live conversation today on a podcast show where we were talking about setting intentions for the new year. The show seemed to go a little off-track, and some yelling happened (including…

4 min read | 110 claps

People Are Perfect Just the Way They Are

Yesterday, while Cindy and I were waiting in line for the ski lift, a guy with his son whizzed past in the channel that was empty and reserved for “ski and snowboard school only.” He and his son were…

5 min read | 118 claps

Grammarly Doesn’t Understand Me Anymore

According to Wikipedia, “Grammarly is an online grammar checking, spell checking, and plagiarism detection platform developed by Grammarly, Inc.” It’s a pretty amazing tool for detecting errors in…

2 min read | 183 claps

It Doesn’t Matter How Many Followers I Have

I have recently started sharing more on Instagram. I have noticed that when I include tags, people follow me. Soon, however, those people unfollow me again. I imagine that it’s because I didn’t…

2 min read | 240 claps

The Power of Holding-On and Letting-Go

Cindy and I have been snowboarding at Lake Tahoe in Nevada. Cindy is a beginner. She had a lesson a couple of days ago, and since then has been practicing on the very-slightly-sloping beginner run…

3 min read | 144 claps

The Search Ends When You Quit Looking

Most people seem to spend most of their lives seeking fulfillment in illusory alternative circumstances. Even if it’s only subtle, or held unconsciously, there is a belief that when the home is…

3 min read | 220 claps

I Am the Evil I See in the World

It’s 5:15 am, and I’m writing this from a sofa in an Airbnb a few hundred feet from Lake Tahoe in Nevada. Cindy is asleep in the next room. I felt cold, so I slipped on the sweater that I discarded…

9 min read | 829 claps

Medium curated under SPIRITUALITY SELF

The Purpose of Life Is Not to Find Happiness

The last few mornings, I’ve been waking up feeling kind of depressed. At least, the sensations inside my body are ones that I would normally associate with “depression.” These last few mornings have…

3 min read | 452 claps

How I Weather a Bear Market

Prices in the stock markets have been dropping recently. Last night, on Christmas Eve, there was a massive sell-off. According to NPR, this has been the worst December for stocks since 1931. My…

4 min read | 92 claps

Even the Arguments Are Perfect

After eating dinner, I sat on the sofa. Cindy was in the kitchen and she said, “Someone didn’t wash the dishes!” in a way that suggested that I should have washed them. “I’m fine! I just wish you…

4 min read | 40 claps

It’s Not Possible to Mislead People Spiritually

I’ve been told that I’m misleading people by telling them that they don’t need to do anything to have complete freedom, that freedom is all there is, that freedom is what is happening. I’ve been told…

2 min read | 121 claps

How We Limit Ourselves by Placing Gurus on Pedestals

I traveled to India, principally to sit with a renowned guru and to receive initiation from him. Every day for three weeks, I went to his concrete home in Benares, the spiritual heart of India, where…

4 min read | 129 claps

Does the Body Need to Be Conditioned for Enlightenment?

There’s a story that goes around in spiritual circles that you have to spend decades meditating in order to condition your body so that it can “hold” enlightenment. It’s said that you need to open up…

2 min read | 60 claps

You Are Everything That Seems to Be Happening

Wherever you are right now, notice everything that seems to be happening: the thoughts, the feelings, the sights, the sounds. Look around and notice everything you can. Everything that you see is…

2 min read | 85 claps

Thoughts Are Just Thoughts

I tend to believe that when I’m resisting a thought, I’m resisting what the thought seems to be about. So I apparently resist the thought and then there seems to be an emotion or some kind of…

3 min read | 187 claps

Enlightenment Is Not a Destination

Enlightenment is not a state, not a goal, not a way of being. Enlightenment is not something that can be attained, not something you will finally get, not something that you can have. Enlightenment…

2 min read | 677 claps

Medium curated under SPIRITUALITY

My Struggle with Projective Identification

I’ve been in therapy on and off, mostly on, for almost twenty years. I like therapy so much that I even trained to be a therapist, getting a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. Anyone who needs that much…

4 min read | 755 claps

Medium curated under MENTAL HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY SELF

It’s Just Another Sunday

One of my favorite things about Cindy right now is the way she hides her smiles from me. Sometimes, when I say something sweet to her, she turns away and hides the smile. When I let her know that I…

3 min read | 102 claps

The Simplicity of Life

I have psychotherapy every week. I meditate now and then; I meditated this morning. I go to work. I exercise frequently. I try to sleep for eight hours per night, and I try to go to sleep at roughly…

2 min read | 34 claps

How to Be Happy

I have something I have to sell you. It’s workshop in which I will explain to you how you can organize, run, and sell workshops which teach people about how to get people to come to workshops. One of…

3 min read | 14 claps

There Is No Truth

If you’ve been reading my articles recently, you might think that I have found some kind of truth. That’s an illusion. What is being revealed is that there is absolutely no truth at all. How can…

2 min read | 60 claps

I Have No Location

Recently, as part of trying to figure out what’s going on with me, I had a phone call with a woman named Lisa Cairns in France. Lisa is someone who talks about non-duality. I was saying to her that I…

3 min read | 38 claps

Science Is Purely Subjective

Every scientific instrument that has ever been created has a common component that is usually overlooked; telescopes have this component; microscopes have this component; particle accelerators have…

3 min read | 287 claps

Medium curated under PHILOSOPHY

All Religion is Blasphemy

This has been apparent to me for many years, but for some reason I hadn’t seen it as clearly as I do now. Every religion that exists is based on the idea that there is a self that needs to do…

5 min read | 697 claps

The Position of Power

In a room, the seat facing the entrance is generally considered the position of power. This is because it is inside looking out, is protected from behind, and provides the optimum vantage-point from…

3 min read | 28 claps

How I InstaTroll GaryVee for Followers

I’ve been following Gary Vaynerchuck (pronounced vay-ner-chuck) on Instagram for a long time. I haven’t really been using Instagram much, but whenever I would hop on there to look at something my…

4 min read | 1 clap

There Is Only Dying

I was recently having a conversation with an ultrasound technician who was checking that the vein in my shoulder is now clear of clotting after the medical crisis that happened a year ago (you can…

2 min read | 133 claps

This Has Nothing to Do with Religion

Advaita is a Sanskrit word that literally means “non-secondness.” Advaita is also apparently the name of a religion. According to Google, it is “a Vedantic doctrine that identifies the individual…

3 min read | 4 claps

Overwhelm Is Always Just a Story

I woke up in the middle of the night last night, as I often do, and, before my viscerally-held self-concept could come in and claim what was happening, what was happening was just happening. There…

3 min read | 12 claps

Your Destiny Is Not Personal

You only think you know what’s happening right now, but what is happening is actually completely chaotic, not understandable, and not knowable. What is happening is being co-opted by a separate sense…

3 min read | 3 claps

How I Write with Authority

It seems that I write about things with a lot of authority, like I know what I’m talking about, like I’m confident. In truth, I am not confident at all. In truth, I am one of the most unconfident…

3 min read | 32 claps

Freedom from Believing Thoughts

Last night I was at a bar in San Francisco, on a roof-top overlooking the city. I was with two young actors about to begin their careers. We started to talk about what might be possible in their…

3 min read | 613 claps

Medium curated under PHILOSOPHY

Am I Enlightened?

Maybe it crept up on me when I wasn’t looking. But there is nobody for it to creep up on. How can everything creep up on itself? Okay, but there is nothing special happening. Why would everything be…

3 min read | 274 claps

Medium curated under PHILOSOPHY

All Men Are Trash

I heard a story recently about a woman who claimed online somewhere that “all men are trash.” Shocking, huh? On the internet of all places. Who would have thought? What happened next is that some…

4 min read | 130 claps

Mentioned: OKCupid subreddit

Happy Birthlife, Baby!

It was my wife’s birthday recently. She usually declares that the whole month in which her birthday occurs to be her “birthmonth.” At the start of the month, she makes a list of all the things she…

2 min read | 7 claps

This Is How I Suffer

When I suffer, it is because I am not identifying with myself, apparently splitting myself in two. For example, when there is pain in my body, and I believe the thought that “I am in pain” or even “I…

5 min read | 179 claps

Medium curated under PHILOSOPHY SELF

Meditation Is All There Is

I recently wrote an article about awakening and one of my readers suggested that I “keep meditating.” I really appreciated the pointer because when I’m truthful about what is actually happening, it…

2 min read | 33 claps

Relationships Work When You Don’t Take Them Personally

I used to take relationships very personally. If my partner said something that pushed my buttons, initiating a cascade of righteous indignation, then I would engage with it: “How dare she say that!”…

3 min read | 151 claps

The Whole Thing is Always Beautiful

If you have a fully functional parietal lobe, then you’ll be able to recognize and appreciate faces. Facial recognition in humans functions differently than other forms of object recognition. We…

2 min read | 32 claps

About Parking Hogs (and Blame in General)

I used to get annoyed by people who parked so that their car took up more than one space, or so that there was no room to park my car in an adjacent space. I used to judge them as being selfish…

3 min read | 122 claps

Searching for Myself

Am I the sensation on my forearms? Am I the aching feeling in my toes as I move them? Am I the uncomfortable sensation in my stomach? Am I the tingling in my head? Am I these sensations? Am I these…

3 min read | 108 claps

Liberation Is Not an Escape

We tend to believe that liberation is freedom from being human. We think that when we get enlightened, or awake, we’ll no longer have all these unpleasant experiences. In reality, there is no escape…

2 min read | 118 claps

How Can I Know Anything Without Awareness?

A while back, a friend was attempting to persuade me that awareness is real. He told me that all the saints and sages have talked about Awareness or Consciousness as being primary. Until recently, I…

4 min read | 333 claps

Medium curated under PHILOSOPHY

What Are We Searching For?

Today, Cindy and I went to Costco to buy supplies for Thanksgiving. I have always been amazed at the abundance and fullness of Costco, and I have often felt irritated by the throngs of people pushing…

2 min read | 93 claps

Seeing Harmony as Disharmony

There is a way of perceiving the world in which everything is whole, complete, and perfect. This is what is sometimes called the non-dual perspective, or the enlightened perspective. This way of…

3 min read | 261 claps

Medium curated under PHILOSOPHY

I Did Fuck-All This Weekend

This weekend was an anomaly, not because I did fuck-all, but because I did fuck-all with abandon. I didn’t just do fuck-all and pretend to myself that I was going to be productive; I did fuck-all…

2 min read | 92 claps

My Struggle with Enlightenment

I think that my writing is at its best when I address, as directly as possible, what is alive in me, which includes where I struggle. My writing becomes a way of publicly reflecting on things…

9 min read | 618 claps

Medium curated under SPIRITUALITY

What Is Unconditional Love?

To the individual self, unconditional love usually means that we will be loved no matter what. We’ll be loved even when we’re sick and poor. We’ll be loved even as we become old and useless. It may…

3 min read | 96 claps

Luckily, My Wife Married No One

I’ve been worried about waking up from the dream of self (the dream of separation). I was worried not because I need to exist, to have a purpose, or to achieve anything. It’s understandable that…

2 min read | 143 claps

What CrossFit Has Given Me

I’ve been doing CrossFit four about six years now. I used to train five or six days per week. More recently, while recovering from illness, I have been training about three times per week. Here are…

2 min read | 36 claps

Consciousness with a Big C: The Spiritual Red-Herring

In certain spiritual circles, what you’re about to read is extremely controversial. It strikes at the heart of many people’s core beliefs. Whether you’re seeking Consciousness or Self, you’re never…

3 min read | 1 clap

How I Write Every Day While Working Full-Time

A while back, a person that I was coaching revealed that he thought that I was a full-time writer. Then yesterday, a friend at work asked me how I was able to write so much while working full-time…

4 min read | 67 claps

Networking for No Reason

I usually have one-on-one lunch meetings booked for weeks, if not months, into the future. Most of the people I have lunch with work at the same company as me, but sometimes I invite people from…

3 min read | 281 claps

Medium curated under RELATIONSHIPS WORK

How to End Suffering

Many people seem to think that suffering is the same thing as pain. They ask, “If I didn’t have suffering, then wouldn’t I burn my hand on something hot?” In this case, pain is a sensation that the…

4 min read | 729 claps

Medium curated under LIFESTYLE

Psychopaths in a Nutshell

I’m not a world-class expert on psychopaths, but I’ve thought about them and read about them a lot. I believe that understanding psychopaths can help us to understand ourselves and to dispell an…

3 min read | 72 claps

How I Finally Quit Smoking and How to Change Any Behavior

I was at university and I had been smoking cigarettes for years. I was exercising most days and I had begun to notice that my level of fitness seemed to be capped by the smoking. My body and…

3 min read | 43 claps

We Cannot Own Anything

We usually live our lives with the idea that we can touch things, hold things, and own things. There is some sense that we are able to acquire things, but when we take a close look, real ownership…

3 min read | 43 claps

I Love You Like Shoes Love Feet

I love you like mountains love clouds, like cats love lasers, like the rough nib of a pen loves the words that flow from it, words it will never understand. I love you like a dog loves the sound of…

2 min read | 16 claps

I Will Never Be Enlightened

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night and looked out of the door of our bedroom. As I looked, I was not able to understand what I was looking at. It was like a mirror was looking into a…

3 min read | 488 claps

Medium curated under SELF

Life Is Ever-Changing Flavors of Perfection

This morning, I woke up with a full bladder, as I often do. I walked to the bathroom feeling the fullness, and with what is often considered pain. As I walked, a thought appeared: “It’s always been…

3 min read | 79 claps

How to Be in the Now

Let’s assume that now is a thing, and let’s find try to find it. Here is an experiment you can do at home: take your finger and point to something, anything, and ask “is this now?” Point to something…

3 min read | 27 claps

The Futility of Asking Why

In my training as a therapist, I had to learn to stop asking people “why?” Asking why tends to send a client into a spiral of thinking, taking their attention away from the immediacy of what is…

4 min read | 238 claps

The Freedom of Uncertainty

In the last few weeks, maybe months, everything I thought I knew has been turned on its head. Actually, it’s worse than that; it’s become clear to me that I can’t truly know anything. All the…

4 min read | 98 claps

Seeing Is Not What You Think

I sometimes find myself at work, sitting at a table, looking at the edge of it. I am engrossed. I reach out and start running my finger over the edge. I am engaged in a set of scientific experiments…

3 min read | 156 claps

What If This Is What We Really Want?

What if what we’ve been searching for has been here all along, right in front of our eyes? What if it’s been the simplicity of what is happening, no matter what seems to be happening? What if we’ve…

2 min read | 717 claps

Medium curated under PHILOSOPHY

The Illusion of Choice

I’ve been examining the concept of free-will and choice. When I pay attention to what’s happening, I notice that there is only reality (what is). On the other hand, what isn’t is just a concept…

3 min read | 16 claps

Awareness Is an Illusion

This is a very controversial statement in any circle, spiritual or not. We all assume that awareness is real. It seems like we’re looking out of our eyes at reality. It seems that we’re aware. The…

2 min read | 77 claps

We Are Not All One

It has been said to me, “It’s easy for you to say that we are all one when you are a privileged white male. Try telling a person of color who has been treated unjustly that we are all one!” The…

3 min read | 23 claps

A Brief Glimpse of Reality

About seventeen years ago, I had a series of experiences that I called spiritual. These experiences went on for years, at least six years. Some of them seemed to involve the revelation of what I…

6 min read | 66 claps

What Happens When My Wife Says Woof

Many years ago, I was listening to an experienced meditation teacher counseling a student about her practice. The student complained that every time she sat to meditate an owl started to hoot outside…

4 min read | 536 claps

Medium curated under RELATIONSHIPS PSYCHOLOGY

Transform Group Dynamics by Diffusing the Drama Triangle

Once you know about this pattern of human behavior, once you’re able to recognize it, and once you’re able to avoid or resolve it, your life will become much more pleasant. Pretty much exclusively…

3 min read | 149 claps

Medium curated under RELATIONSHIPS PSYCHOLOGY

My Quest to Not Exist

I remember, many years ago, learning about nirvana, the ending of the suffering self by the ending of the self. I wondered what the point of that was: nobody can be free from suffering. This was a…

5 min read | 601 claps

Medium curated under SPIRITUALITY SELF

Nobody Meditates

The bed is warm and comfortable, but this body and mind cannot, will not, drift back to sleep. They have been conditioned to awaken to this schedule, and they contentedly and effortlessly comply. The…

2 min read | 78 claps

Above All Else We Must Practice Falling

Have you ever watched a child learning to walk? They stumble left and right, forward and backward. They fall over often. We notice parents standing near their children, creating guard rails with…

3 min read | 349 claps

Medium curated under SELF

Are We Remembering the Future?

On Facebook, I recently shared a video that was clearly intended to inspire people to envision the future they want. The video suggested that when we think about the future, we are actually…

14 min read | 224 claps

A Conversation with God, Part Two

This is the continuation of an earlier conversation between two parts of myself. One part is my “normal” state of consciousness, while the other part is non-duality, what I consider to be God. To…

7 min read | 178 claps

How Scientific Breakthroughs Work

I have a good friend and colleague who is a very accomplished engineering leader. During lunch yesterday, he told me a story about how he solved what at first seemed to be an extraordinarily…

5 min read | 58 claps

A Conversation with God, Part One

In December of 2001, after meditating for only thirty minutes per day, every day, for four months, I came to know what I understand to be the fundamental nature of reality. I have written a little…

11 min read | 395 claps

Why I’m Grateful for My White Privilege

Recently, I was having a conversation with a white female friend about white privilege. She denied that white privilege is real and told me that it’s a concept designed to shame white people. I…

4 min read | 365 claps

STOP: The Counter-Intuitive Secret to Success

We read and hear so much about how to be more productive and efficient, and to stay motivated, and to do more. Gary Vaynerchuk tells us to always “hustle,” to sleep less than six hours per night, and…

3 min read | 438 claps

The Perfection of Reality

This morning, I was riding my motorcycle to work when I realized, again, how perfect everything is: the glint of the sun on the edge of my visor, the bumpiness of the road, and the cracks in the…

3 min read | 102 claps

How to Respond to Bullies

In this article, I’m going to instruct you on how to respond to bullies. First of all, we need to define what a bully is. If you witness someone trying to get others to do things by threatening them…

4 min read | 163 claps

Some Snapshots from My Shitty Childhood

When I was about five, my parents divorced. I have very vague memories from that time. In one of my clearer memories, I was standing in the driveway of our house, presumably lost in thought, when…

9 min read | 227 claps

What Gardening Has Taught Me About Life

I was sitting in my therapist’s office, telling her how much I enjoyed gardening, when she said, “Gardening seems like a spiritual practice for you.” I stopped talking and looked at her in silence as…

10 min read | 631 claps

Medium curated under SELF ENVIRONMENT

My Struggle with Impostor Syndrome

I sat in the meeting room filled with other engineers and stared at the projection screen. Like a newborn child, I couldn’t understand most of what I was looking at or hearing. I recognized almost…

11 min read | 207 claps

Hugging for High-Achievers

I’m usually at my desk in the early morning, writing nonsense like this, when I hear a distressed-sounding “boo boo?!” from the bedroom. When Cindy was very little she used to sleep in the same bed…

4 min read | 578 claps

The Insanity of Driving

Recently, I was driving back to the South Bay from San Francisco when I got caught in some stop-and-go traffic, which is a common experience in the Bay Area. I was on the 101, a freeway (motorway in…

7 min read | 322 claps

How to Learn Anything

Even though I almost failed my school exams at age 16, I turned my life around and went on to get a bachelor’s degree (BEng) in electronic engineering, a master of science (MS) in electrical…

15 min read | 2.5K claps

Medium curated under EDUCATION

The Parasite Behind the Cat Lady

Cindy and I were sitting in our hot tub the other night, talking with a couple of friends from England, when the topic of cat ladies came up. That was probably because my friend Daniel is the…

3 min read | 62 claps

Statistics for Trolls and What I’m Learning from Perilous Bridge Crossings

I get approached by trolls of all shapes and sizes, and I’ve come to learn a thing or two about them. I know that the basic one-size-fits-all admonition regarding trolls is, “Don’t feed the trolls,”…

9 min read | 300 claps

I Won’t Wipe Your Ass for You, and Other Sound Financial Advice

I frequently get messages from people on Facebook Messenger, and through other channels, asking me to give them stuff. Sometimes it’s a house, and sometimes it’s a few hundred grand; what’s a few…

5 min read | 311 claps

True Selfishness is a Virtue

We talk about people with “big egos” as if big egos are really big. What we forget is that big egos are actually very small. Someone with a big ego thinks that they’re very important and special, and…

3 min read | 220 claps

How to Turbocharge Your Meditation with Gratitude

One of the simplest and most common forms of meditation is to pay attention to the breath. To practice this meditation, you sit still, with your eyes closed, and notice the breathing process without…

6 min read | 322 claps

How to Sleep Like a Boss

As a teenager, I often stayed up all night watching TV, and then I slept when I was supposed to be in class. I got depressed, I was failing academically, and I was struggling to maintain supportive…

8 min read | 793 claps

Medium curated under LIFESTYLE

Great Writers Preserve the Cognitive Resources of Their Readers

Recently, a friend messaged me, asking me to review something he had written and then give him some feedback. When I started reading his writing, I quickly started to feel disoriented and…

3 min read | 316 claps

How to Build a 100x Company by Fully Unlocking Human Potential

Many years ago, when I was a manager, I spent at least fourteen hours per week in one-on-one meetings with the people who reported to me. As a problem-solver and an optimizer, I sought to understand…

10 min read | 612 claps

Beat Insomnia with a Spoonk

A spoonk is a type of acupressure mat, sixteen inches wide by twenty-six inches tall, which is soft but covered with hundreds of sharp, plastic spikes. I heard that two-thirds of families of Sweden…

3 min read | 174 claps

A Satirical Look at a Mythical Startup / A Leadership Teaching Story

CarPusher started out as just Stanley Bucket, a sole trader, pushing cars out of his parent’s garage in Mountain View, California. Before long, word got around that Stanley was great at pushing cars…

11 min read | 280 claps

How to Stop Your Clothes From Smelling of Vaginas, Bum Cracks, and Testicles

One morning, I had just sat down in my home office, after taking a thorough shower and donning clean clothes, when I smelled something odd. It smelled worse than someone who had not washed for a few…

7 min read | 2.3K claps

I Relentlessly Drench My Wife With Love. Here’s How and Why.

The first thing I do in the morning, when Cindy wakes up, is to tell her that I love her. With emphasis and enthusiasm, I say, “I love you soooooo much!” Then the last thing I do before we go to…

5 min read | 1.1K claps

Medium curated under RELATIONSHIPS

How I Forgave My Abusers and Escaped From Victim Mentality

My eyes opened slowly. Above me, I saw a meadow of beautiful pink and violet flowers. The scene was filled with a light that danced between the blossoms and washed across the field of soft, delicate…

5 min read | 411 claps

How to Make People Laugh

This is a compact guide to making people laugh in everyday life. This guide is going to teach you how to add real and effective humor to your work meetings, to your presentations, and to your dates…

7 min read | 224 claps

How to Know What You Want and How to Get It

I recently had lunch with a friend and colleague. He’s early in his engineering career, a young father, eager, innocent, and intelligent. He came to me with the same question that most people have…

5 min read | 487 claps

How to Learn to Surf

I pick up the board, feeling the sticky wax under my fingertips. I carry it, under my arm, over the soft sand, and wade slowly into the cool water, sometimes feeling a smooth pebble under my toes. I…

11 min read | 106 claps

When pen is placed upon the page there is nobody here except a peaceful, humble sage; his Master standing near. Even in the person third, my essence you can trust will fill him up with words absurd…

Medium produces audio versions of my articles. What’s that like?

Medium just released the audio version of What Standup Comedy Taught Me About Public Speaking and Life. This is the third time that one of my articles has been recorded and released by Medium. Last…

3 min read | 494 claps

What I’ve Learned About Thieves and Patent Law

Before going into the ocean, I had carefully placed my flip-flops next to an odd-looking arrangement of driftwood on the beach, near a broken and abandoned fold-away camping chair. When I returned…

13 min read | 589 claps

For Our Anniversary, We Almost Died Together

It was the fourth anniversary of our relationship. We were playing in the waves in Costa Rica when I saw that Cindy, five or six feet from me, was looking concerned. I remembered reading that…

6 min read | 416 claps

Callipygian Swagger

She’s so much more than Mother Earth with sun and moon about her girth; a goddess in the underbrush with skin so soft and hair so lush. I’ll caress her in Orion Beta; she’ll shower me with sweet…

Why My Wife Thinks That I’m a Good Man

Recently, my wife has been calling me a good man. She said to me, “You’re such a good man, Duncan!” It really struck me hard because, while some kids want to grow up to be fire fighters, or…

3 min read | 1.8K claps

What Standup Comedy Taught Me About Public Speaking and Life

A few years ago I went through a period of intense training and practice in standup comedy. I took a 12-week course in the UK, and then I started performing regularly, both in the UK and in the San…

22 min read | 975 claps | Audio version available

Resentment: a yacht I used to feel with drafting sail¹ and canting keel²; once plied upon the sea of life, then harbored, safe, towards my wife³. At last I chose to seek the sane, with eyes washed…

2 min read | 170 claps

Unleash the Buddha Within

I want you to stop pretending that you’re not enlightened. I want you to remember that you’ve been fooling yourself. You’ve been telling yourself stories about yourself that are not true. Look at…

2 min read | 4.1K claps | Audio version available

How to Create Outstanding Titles

I used to get upset when people complimented me for my titles, mostly because I spent so much time and effort on generating high quality content, and not on creating the titles. “It’s not about the…

10 min read | 481 claps

I Feel Terrified in Restrooms. Here’s Why.

I need privacy to pee. If there is nobody else in the restroom, then I can pee freely, but when there is someone standing next to me, even if my bladder is close to exploding, my urethral sphincters…

8 min read | 237 claps

Our Beautiful and Painful Relationship

I don’t care if my wife leaves me. Why would I want to be with someone who doesn’t want to be with me? Sure, it would break my heart. Sure, I would cry in strange locations at random times for many…

3 min read | 5K claps | Audio version available

How to Debug Any Problem

The ability to quickly and effectively find and resolve bugs in new and established systems is one of the most valuable engineering skills that you can develop. Since this skill enables the rapid…

8 min read | 2.3K claps

Mentioned: CSS Weekly

The Biggest Secret of Great Writers

Writing that people love, and that they share with others, has several distinguishing characteristics. Great writing is not only free from errors but also pleasurable to read. The information flows…

4 min read | 675 claps

How to Become World-Class at Anything

When I was 16, I performed relatively poorly in my GCSE exams, exams which every kid in the UK takes. Having missed most of my classes, and barely studied, I received a D in math and an F for French…

11 min read | 42K claps | Audio version available

Republished: Business Insider | Mentioned: University of Reading News and Attack The front

How to Get Rich Slowly (or Quick)

So you want to be rich, huh? I receive many messages from people via LinkedIn and Facebook Messenger asking for my advice on getting rich. Most of these questions come from young men aged between 15…

12 min read | 513 claps

Why You Need This Powerful Self-Knowledge Tool

At psychology graduate school, I heard about the enneagram of personality, referred to as “the enneagram” for short, and I was initially very skeptical of it. The enneagram is a system for…

11 min read | 308 claps

I’m usually awake by 6 am every day. Today I got up at 5 am. I meditate, spend some time with my wife, and then I write. My first real task each morning is to write, and I write for between one and…

5 min read | 646 claps

Letter to a New Manager

Sixteen years ago, at 27, I was promoted to a managerial position at work. I was employee #197, and I had joined the company several years before the initial public offering (IPO). When I started…

7 min read | 227 claps

A Short Story About Ego

Elijah Scattergood strolled along the prow of the cliff. Not only had he been afflicted with a large and bulbous nose, but he had also developed a trait of wandering barefoot in public places…

5 min read | 56 claps

How Do We Stop Child Molestation?

I have been wanting to write this article for a long time, but I have held off because this subject is so taboo. Since I don’t adhere to the socially acceptable position of “They should just be…

16 min read | 721 claps

How I’m Training Duncan to Be a Better Husband

Over the holidays, my husband Duncan published an article entitled How I’m Training My Wife to Be Happy. It’s a brow-raising title and one I knew would catch people’s attention, making some curious…

8 min read | 1.1K claps

A List of 100 Things That Work Really Well

I wrote this list down, and I wanted to share it with you. I could write a whole article, at least, about each of these items, but I wanted to give you this list and see what you think of it. Here…

3 min read | 923 claps

A Chinese Unicorn (Unintentionally) Shoots Down Medium’s Read Ratio

This started on Saturday January 6, 2018. I was looking at my Medium stats when I noticed that the reads-per-view ratio on one of my stories, entitled I Almost Died. This Is What I learned, was…

6 min read | 1.2K claps

How I Increased the Medium Read Ratio Without Changing the Story

I recently published a story in P.S. I Love You, originally entitled How to Be Powerful in Relationship, and was then surprised to discover that, even though it was getting a lot of views, it was…

6 min read | 1.3K claps

A Short Story About Awareness

Elijah Scattergood sat quietly in the corner of the pub. Not only was he afflicted with a seventeenth-century name, but he was also plagued by a rampant imagination and a deeply inquiring mind…

4 min read | 36 claps

The Theory of Adorable Attachment

I’m going to start by summarizing attachment theory, and then relate it to my relationship with my wife, Cindy. If you’re already thoroughly familiar with attachment theory then you might want to…

10 min read | 1.2K claps

Your Superpower Is Also Your Kryptonite

My superpower is the ability to work really, really hard. I have incredible persistence and work ethic. This has served me well. I’ve made millions of dollars, and achieved some pretty impressive…

5 min read | 395 claps

I Almost Died. This Is What I Learned

This is an epic recounting of what happened when I was suddenly hospitalized with a rare condition, what the medical staff did, what the homeless and drug addicts did, and how I handled all of it.

26 min read | 1.6K claps

The Truth About The Old iPhone Slowdown Fiasco

For a few weeks now, I have wanted to write an article about the slow-down of old iPhones. This desire started when I was having online conversations about it. In those conversations, many people did…

3 min read | 2.2K claps

How I’m Training My Wife to Be Happy

Cindy and I were married three-and-a-half years ago. Our companionship, intimacy, and love have deepened over that time, and we have developed an extremely stable foundation. This has been possible…

7 min read | 4.9K claps

Republished: The Good Men Project

Why the Internet Must Be Regulated

This article explains, in-a-nutshell, why it’s actually anti-capitalist to not regulate internet services providers (ISPs). In free-market capitalism, monopoly must be addressed and regulated.

6 min read | 502 claps

Your bank is training you to have your identity stolen

A number appears on my phone that I don’t recognize, and, just this one time, I pick up, and I hear, “Hello, my name is June. I’m calling from the fraud department of …

7 min read | 503 claps

Republished: The Next Web

The Most Important Relationship Skill

There is a one key skill that you can develop that will make you masterful in relationships. Without this skill, your relationships will be unsatisfying and short-lived. With this skill, you will be…

7 min read | 5.7K claps

Is Bitcoin a Pyramid Scheme?

Cryptocurrencies are important and valuable. Distributed blockchain technology, as pioneered by bitcoin, is important. The future of money really is cryptocurrencies, possibly led by bitcoin. I’ve…

6 min read | 2.7K claps

How to Create True Love

A relationship usually starts with a honeymoon period in which each person is infatuated with the other. This period can last from a few weeks to a few years, but usually last for about six months…

6 min read | 3.5K claps

How I Write Stories That Go Viral

My articles have been in the top-twenty on Medium multiple times, and I have been a Top Writer in Relationships, Health, Productivity, and Start-Ups. So far, I have written three articles that have…

15 min read | 960 claps

What 4,300 hours of meditation has taught me

I started meditating consistently in the summer of 2001. I had just finished developing the first Microsoft Xbox, and I literally sat with my feet on my desk. I should have felt proud and satisfied…

18 min read | 7.1K claps

Mentioned: Persistence is Futile: How Taking a Break Can Move You Forward (paid link)

What The Buddha Taught (in a nutshell)

Over 2,500 years ago, Siddhārtha Gautama was born into a rich family in India. Having noticed that suffering seemed to be pervasive, he left his opulent lifestyle in search of a solution. After…

2 min read | 786 claps

Everything is my guru (including the internet trolls)

I’ve been struggling a lot with trolls recently. They show up and try to spoil the party. They tell me that I’m pompous, or a psychopath, or unfaithful to my wife. They tell me that I should stop…

10 min read | 106 claps

It turns me on when she cries

I’m going to tell you about an argument that my wife (Cindy) and I had last night. I’m writing about it partly because I want to show you how unexpectedly productive an argument can be; I want to…

7 min read | 52 claps

I spent all of my millions. This is what I learned

I have written about how I became a multi-millionaire at 27, and what that taught me. I was at a meditation retreat recently, when it became clear to me that I had to write this story about how I…

19 min read | 3.4K claps

Republished: NY OBSERVER | Mentioned: Bloomberg

I’m antifragile as fnck. Please break me.

This is a story about me and my friend up-leveling our careers, about him becoming a React Native developer, and about me becoming a world-class expert in AI. It’s a story of reciprocal inspiration…

13 min read | 99 claps

I’m wealthier than ever. Here’s how.

I am painfully introverted. I’m also a workaholic. I can go days, or even weeks, without talking with another person. I dislike being in large groups of people, and much prefer being with just one…

13 min read | 304 claps

I succeeded by following the path of least resistance

My wife recently gave me a piece of driftwood with a quote from David Foster Wallace laser-engraved into it. It reads, “Almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer…

5 min read | 220 claps

What I learned from dating a female narcissist

Only a small fraction of the women I have dated have acted-out consistently on the narcissistic spectrum. I have combined the experiences with those women into a composite for the purposes of this…

6 min read | 864 claps

I married the first person I had sex with. Here’s what I learned.

She stroked my leg under the table in the Student Union. I liked that, so I married her. I’m serious. This is what I’m like; I tend to go all-in immediately. I commit like crazy. At least this is…

10 min read | 6.6K claps

Republished: THOUGHT CATALOG and Fatherly

I achieve my goals daily, and it’s easy. Here’s how.

In this article, I’m going to show you how to have, do, and be, whatever you choose. You going to have an experience of what I’m talking about while reading this article, and you’re going to gain a…

10 min read | 412 claps

Multi-millionaire at 27. What I learned.

In the early two-thousands, I was an early employee at a Silicon Valley technology company that designs and markets cutting-edge computer processing chips. When I started, there were a few dozen…

16 min read | 2.7K claps

Republished: CNBC make it and translated into Russian

The Good Person’s Guide to Kicking Ass

There’s a reason that we see so many corrupt people in positions of power and authority. It’s not because they’re particularly competent. They’re not there because they do a good job. The reason they…

9 min read | 52 claps

What is Bulletproof Coffee?

Bulletproof coffee is just lab-tested coffee with grass-fed butter and 8-carbon, medium-chain triglycerides blended into it. That’s literally what it is, nothing more, nothing less. No magic, nothing…

4 min read | 33 claps

Who wins when a snake devours its own tail?

I have been told that our society is moving inevitably towards a totalitarian regime, and that our only choice is which type of totalitarian regime it will be: fascist or communist. I was told that…

3 min read | 20 claps

You don’t need therapy. You need lifestyle.

I’ve provided about 3,500 hours of supervised psychotherapy. I’ve also had around 1,000 hours of psychotherapy myself. The conclusion I came to at the end of my pre-doctoral internship is that most…

5 min read | 228 claps

Leadership for “Winners”

Leadership is big in the news right now, and for good reason: leadership is important. You are important. Being a leader makes you feel good and look good. It also brings other benefits, like being…

4 min read | 8 claps

How to Lose Friends and Manipulate People (Don’t Do These Things)

In today’s world, people rarely ask me how they can effectively alienate everyone around them. It’s one thing to be truly and deeply successful, happy, and fulfilled, but who wants that, when you can…

4 min read | 30 claps

21 Relationship Principles You Need To Know

Everyone wants a great relationship. Most people either don’t know what they need to do consistently to have a great relationship, or they struggle to take action they know is necessary. Having a…

21 min read | 133 claps

Spiritual Instruction Manual for Skynet

Everyone is all up-in-arms about general superintelligence. “Will it be good, or will it be bad?” Some folks believe that this superintelligence will be a reflection of its creators: if we are…

16 min read | 52 claps

Why The Terminator Doesn’t Bitch About Money, and Why You Shouldn’t Either

Money is an amazing thing. It’s a powerful thing. Money represents a massive opportunity given to us by society. Money is the distillation of all the efficiencies we get from human collaboration on a…

11 min read | 165 claps

How to avoid a carb crash (and other productivity hacks)

You know that feeling you get between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. every day, that tired feeling where you don’t want to do anything? You want to lie down and sleep, but you have to work, or at least you have…

7 min read | 1.5K claps

Little Blue Crosses

Morning pages is one of the life bootstrapping practices that I have been using. I have a stack of sheets from doing morning pages for the past six months. It’s something that I have created…

2 min read | 5 claps

My Resolution: Fewer Resolutions

I’ve been doing this lifestyle challenge now for four months, and I’ve learned a lot about what motivates me from the process. Last month I had a row entitled, “Bed before 10 pm.” I almost never put…

4 min read | 13 claps

What Is the Lifestyle Challenge?

It’s the eve of the new year. Tomorrow will be 2017. I’m on day 118 of this lifestyle challenge and I realized that there are some things about it that I have not yet explained. A lot of people have…

3 min read | 367 claps

Letting Go of Limiting Beliefs

Today I was sanding some spackle that filled a hole in the wall, a hole that I made by mistake while mounting a shelf, a shelf I put there to hold remote controls, remote controls for our TV and…

3 min read | 10 claps

On Being Imperfect

It’s Christmas Day, and I’m on day 112 of my lifestyle challenge. This past month has been, how do you say, different. Taking a look at this month’s chart and comparing it with the previous three…

2 min read | 11 claps

Hurting Women Is Not Manly

This is an amazing and thorough analysis of the problem with street harassment and rape culture. I was proud to see that much of my intuitive understanding of why men catcall and harass women on the…

2 min read | 15 claps

I’m an mostly an introvert. I’m also a workaholic. Left to my own devices, I would never see anyone. Enter social tracking … I’ve been tracking social time for a month-and-a-half, and I’ve been…

The Power of Not Reacting

This is at the core of everything I teach. It’s what I keep coming back to. I struggle with it, and everyone struggles with it. When we don’t react, we leave space to respond. You get that text…

2 min read | 11 claps

Problem Solving

Every day I use a brain training app called Peak. I’ve been gradually increasing my scores and noticing improvements in other areas of my life, which I believe may be related to the training. The…

2 min read | 6 claps

Every day we sit for 30 minutes, on the floor, looking at each other, eye-to-eye, sometimes in silence. Sometimes we talk, sometimes we talk about what we’re feeling, sometimes about what we’re…

Day 86: Tiny Little Squirts of Insulin

When I used to eat a regular “healthy diet,” low in fats and moderately high in sugars and starches, I would spend most of the afternoon falling asleep. Now I almost never eat refined sugar, and I…

2 min read | 92 claps

Day 85: Soft as a Baby

This is a weird and unexpected benefit of my new lifestyle: my skin has become silky soft, non-oily, and zit free. My skin feels really, really smooth and soft. I also used to get really dry elbows…

2 min read | 29 claps

Day 84: Strategies and Tactics

It’s really important and valuable for me to be aware of, and pay attention to, both my strategies and my tactics. My systematic strategic thinking is currently most apparent in the creation and…

2 min read | 33 claps

Day 82: Drinking, Sleeping, and Socializing

The chart shows that I have had 20 standard drinks over a period of 21 days, that’s an average of less than one standard drink per day, which is much less than the recommended maximum average of two…

2 min read | 1 clap

Day 80: Watching

While sitting in the cold-plunge again this morning, I noticed a bit more about what makes life extraordinary. This whole process of getting into the cold plunge, with the deep breathing, and the…

Day 79: Surrender

I watched Cindy go ahead of me into the water, sitting back, holding her nose, and sinking into its cold embrace. I followed, slowly, taking several deep breaths before lowering my trunk down into…

Day 71: The System Serves You

Every 30 days or so I pivot with this lifestyle challenge checklist. I review, revise, and change things. This is both to challenge myself, and to make it work better for me. Here are some things…

Day 69: Use What You Have

People have asked me the same question I ask myself: why do I share these charts and write these articles? It’s easy for me to look for, find, and express an “acceptable” answer: I want to help and…

5 min read | 1 clap

No, America Is Not Full of Assholes

A lot of people I know are very surprised that Donald Trump managed to win the US presidential election. How is it possible that someone like Trump can be the President? His character seems to be so…

4 min read | 2 claps

Day 62: Grow Your Emotional Bank Account

I was talking with a friend recently when I mentioned the emotional bank account. He had not heard of the concept, and I realized that many people might not know about this. I learned about the…

3 min read | 1 clap

Why My Wife Comes 40 Times per Day

I’m not writing this article to shock you, or to brag. I know that, mostly because of shame, sex is often not discussed, or is glossed-over. I know that problems with sex is one of the main factors…

3 min read | 3 claps

Day 60: The Dirt IS the Gold

I’ve completed day 60 of this lifestyle challenge. As I have written about in earlier articles and posts, I feel consistent energy and mental clarity from when I awake until I go to bed, I sleep…

5 min read | 90 claps

Day 40: Success is a Dynamic Bell Curve

I’ve been tracking and improving a lot of things recently, from my time under a cold shower, to the amount of water I’m drinking. One of the things I’ve noticed is that when I have a clear goal, and…

Day 34: Goal Setting

Some people tell me that I have experienced a lot of success in my life. I understand that this “success” is the result of goals that I set in the past. I once wrote down that I would be a “world…

4 min read | 1 clap

Day 52: The Path is a Blazed Trail

On my recent meditation retreat, I was meticulously scanning the vedanā (sensation) inside my body when I reached the top of my head. At that moment, departing from the instructions, I felt compelled…

Day 50: Strong Determination (adhiṭṭhāna)

I returned from a ten-day meditation retreat on Sunday. From the fourth day to the tenth day of the retreat, three of the one-hour meditation sessions each day focused on developing adhiṭṭhāna, which…

3 min read | 10 claps

Day 49: Equanimity is Purity

I’m counting the last 12 days as day 49 in my lifestyle challenge: a ten-day meditation retreat, plus a day to get there and a day to get back. The water in Lake County (the location of the retreat…

3 min read | 3 claps

Ego Is Just a Bad Habit

I’m not even going to pretend to be spiritual. I’m not going to tell you that I’m religious either. I’m an atheist, and I have been since I met God. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s…

5 min read | 1 clap

How Five Months of Intense Meditation Changed Me

It’s been five months since I started consistently doing two hours of vipassana meditation per day. I have previously provided updates after one, two, three, and four months. Here is where I’m at…

2 min read | 73 claps

The Meditation Experiment: Two Months

This is an experiment to see what would happen if I consistently meditated for two hours per day, once roughly every twelve hours. I wrote an update after one month, and it’s now been over two months…

5 min read | 8 claps

The Meditation Experiment: Month One

I did my first 10-day vipassana retreat back in 2011; ten days of up to 11 hours of meditation per day. It was life-changing, but when it came to an end I did what most people seem to do: decide to…

6 min read | 11 claps

Meditation: Enlightenment Is Not the Goal

On the final day of a recent 10-day vipassana retreat, the first and only day when we could talk with each other, another participant posed an interesting conundrum: “I don’t know whether it’s worth…

2 min read | 7 claps