Articles: 299

Words: 335,044

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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
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
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
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)
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 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
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
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
Chosen by Medium's curators for further distribution
Mentioned: Mind Matters
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
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
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
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
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
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
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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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 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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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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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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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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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
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
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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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
On Hacker News
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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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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
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
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
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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The Crow
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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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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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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
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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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
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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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
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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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
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
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
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
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 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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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 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
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
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
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
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
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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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
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
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
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
Social Time
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…
21 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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