Living with Intensity: A Guide to Self, Relationships, and Society

Life is experienced through different levels of intensity. We can feel it on a roller coaster, when we turn up the volume, or when we have an intense conversation. While 100-meter sprints are short and intense, making our hearts pound and our breathing skyrocket, a marathon is more about sustained effort, a slow burn that tests our patience. Of course, sprints are relative. They could be a spicy meal, a single workout, a month-long intensive course, or a year building something that matters. Intensity is in the concentration of effort, not necessarily the duration. Continue exploring

Tapping into Hidden Strength

Unlocking the Strength Beneath Our Struggles

The term post-traumatic stress disorder—the psychological troubles that unfold after severe stressful events—is familiar to many. Far less known, however, is post-traumatic growth: our ability to rise stronger after adversity. I first encountered the term in Kelly McGonigal’s The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It. Continue exploring

How to Build Self-Trust When It Is Difficult

We know that one of the most important keys to success in any relationship is trust. But what about trust in ourselves?

What is our relationship with trust when things get difficult—when self-doubt creeps in, when we face criticism, or when we need to make an important decision? In moments like these, we may begin second-guessing ourselves, feeling small, thin, or loose, like we may float away. Once we recognize where we stand with ourselves and begin to nurture our relationship with trust, we can start to develop inner trust not just as a fleeting feeling, but as a lifelong skill. Continue exploring

9 Civil Engineering Principles You Can Apply to Your Life

Principles are fascinating. They’re universal truths that guide our decision-making and approach to life. Figuring out the guiding principles within your work or passion forces you to think deeply about their core essence. Exploring how they might apply to life helps strip away excess complexity—revealing not just the unique value within the craft, but offering insight into how we might live better, differently. As a byproduct, it sharpens our ability to synthesize and get to the root of what truly matters. Continue exploring

Holding on and Letting Go

“Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything – anger, anxiety, or possessions – we cannot be free.” -Thich Nhat Hanh

In childhood, we don’t really own anything. As students, we have yet to achieve something. All youth is a process of learning. Children are naturally interested in learning, playing, and exploring. They hold on to the few people they know well, but there isn’t much for them to let go of. Children are free—they don’t have to worry about holding on or letting go (that’s our hope). They simply live in the present, and we prepare them for the future. And as we grow older, we gradually transition into the business of “accumulating.” Continue exploring

Love Within, Action Beyond

Balancing Self-Love and Selfless Action

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love moves the world. It moves us. It gives our lives meaning. We all know what it means to love and be loved, but it’s much harder to know how to stay in love. However, when it comes to loving ourselves, we don’t know what to do. It’s as if the love we deserve is only validated externally. But eventually, we must realize that to learn to love ourselves and to seek within are fundamental pillars of our well-being and fulfillment in life. Many problems arise throughout our lifetimes when we don’t. We get depressed. We feel lonely. Nothing makes sense and we turn outward for love, creating all sorts of additional problems. Continue exploring

The Truth About Finding Purpose

A Guide to Meaningful Living

After decades of school defining my sense of purpose, the idea of finding myself seemed intriguing. I first came across this concept in Tony Robbins’ Awaken the Giant Within, where he discusses the importance of understanding your “why.” He explains that with a strong enough why, we can better navigate emotional struggles, overcome life’s obstacles, and remain committed to our goals. With a clear purpose, he argues, we can always find the “how.” Since then, I’ve read countless books on everything purpose-related: personal calling, starting with why, intrinsic motivation, higher purpose, and the true north—you name it. What I’ve come to realize is that the truth about finding purpose extends far beyond just self-reflection. Continue exploring

Embracing the Paradoxes of Life

Embracing the paradoxes of life reveals how it isn’t linear, nor does it have a single right answer. Life can be better understood through seemingly contradicting truths that challenge our conventional thinking. Each paradox opens us up to a deeper understanding about the inner workings of life, helping us grasp what we otherwise couldn’t. Continue exploring

Reclaiming Virtue, Wisdom, and Meaning in Life

Why Balancing Reason and Wisdom in the Modern Age Matters

“It is difficult to persuade mankind that the love of virtue is the love of themselves.” -Marcus Tullius Cicero

I believe that humanity stands at a critical crossroads. Our obsession with science, technology, and now artificial intelligence is systematically undermining the very essence of what it means to be human. This transformation begins with how we educate our youth—with a definite bias toward scientific rationality. While the Western educational model separated from religious institutions to honor cultural freedom and diversity, it left a void that hasn’t yet been filled, deeply affecting our human experience. Let’s explore how reclaiming virtue, wisdom, and meaning in life can start with understanding why virtue forms the vital foundation of our human development. Continue exploring

A Philosophy of Gratitude

A Gateway to Virtue

“Gratitude is the single most important ingredient to living a successful and fulfilled life.” -Jack Canfield

Gratitude is such a powerful concept, essential to our being and pivotal to our life, that I keep coming back to it. After exploring gratitude through appreciation, expressing it, finding gratitude when it’s hard, and giving, a deeper philosophical question emerged: How does gratitude influence our success, shape our perceptions, relationships, and worldview? Let’s explore. Continue exploring

9 Reading and Writing Principles You Can Apply to Your Life

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” -Dr. Seuss

Reading and writing are fascinating. I believe they are the most important skills you can learn in school. Writing is generally about communicating ideas and stories that transport the audience to a place from which they leave transformed. Less obvious, though, is that writing is also about the writer’s personal transformation. Writing is like a liaison between our inner world and the outer world. Continue exploring

Beyond Inspiration, Willpower, and Hard Work

How to Keep Learning, Growing, and Moving Forward

There are moments in life that just happen. When we’re young, we can learn a second language effortlessly. As adults, sometimes we feel inspired and suddenly tap into our creativity. We want to believe that all it takes to achieve important things is willpower. We think, if only we tried hard enough. We push ourselves to get things done through sheer hard work, but eventually we relapse into our old ways. Making progress is anything but linear, and to sustain it, we need a better approach. We must go beyond inspiration, willpower, and hard work. Continue exploring

Don’t Be Afraid to Make a Fool of Yourself

“A mistake that makes you humble is better than an achievement that makes you arrogant.” – Unknown

When I was in second grade, I was sort of a class clown. I remember feeling proud of myself because I could make the kids laugh, and I thought I was making an otherwise boring class more fun. Of course, that didn’t go well. I was shamed for being disruptive to the class. Many such things shape us in many areas of life—molding us to conform to societal norms and expectations. We grow up to seek external validation and recognition. We go on a quest to be smart. Unfortunately, we become afraid to make a fool of ourselves for the rest of our lives. Continue exploring

The Truth About the Rat Race

What is the rat race?

The rat race is a metaphor in finance that illustrates the pointless pursuit to achieve some degree of financial independence, like rats in a maze that never quite make it to the cheese. Popularized by Robert Kiyosaki with his board game Cashflow and his many books, the concept became a concrete way to showcase how we can be financially trapped as the obligations in life keep exceeding what we earn, despite our persistent hard work. Continue exploring

Understanding What Real Risk Is (And How to Manage It)

A lesson from the Sonoran Desert

The Sonoran Desert is home to powerful cacti—like the Saguaro and the Cardon Gigante which are the tallest and largest cacti in North America. Did you know that the Cardon Gigante can even grow without soil on bare rock? The Cardon Gigante can withstand temperatures of up to 50°C (122 F)! On the other hand, the Saguaro flourishes during the summer due to its “thick waxy coating that waterproofs” it. All cacti are impressive. Just as the Black Spruce thrives in the tundra, these cacti thrive in the desert. Continue exploring

Restrictions: Resources and Time

“It’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for.” –Robert Kiyosaki

In life, there are all sorts of restrictions. There’s federal laws, state laws, cultural norms, and every organization has its own set of rules. We are restricted (positively mostly) by these laws and restrictions. In art, we’re restricted by the canvas, in photography by the frame, and in chess by its rules. Useful restrictions and rules help keep systems from falling apart. Furthermore, they become the source of creativity. But what about money? Do we really see money as a restriction? Do we get creative around it? Or are we passive (and mostly unconscious) about it? Also, who restricts it? Without a doubt, restrictions of resources and time dictate much of how we go about life. Continue exploring

Marriage and Life

What Marriage Has to Teach Us About Life.

Marriage has been under pressure. I hear many stories about why some people don’t need the government or church involved in their relationships. Comments range from: “I’m spiritual, but not religious” to “I don’t need anyone or anything to show how committed I am.” It’s also no surprise that the overall rate of divorce is quite high. A significant amount of people prefer open relationships, cohabitation, etc. I even hear some arguments that monogamy isn’t biological. Continue exploring

What Is Excellence?

What is excellence? What does it mean to you? Excellence is not about being perfect. It is a value: a state of ownership in your work and a mark of your craft. Unfortunately, in today’s busy world, excellence is sacrificed for speedy work and quick profits. Quantity over quality. I’d argue that excellence is no longer a priority. But why not? Do we perceive it as something too idealistic? Are we afraid to fail or to fall short? Perhaps it’s simply because we don’t really know what excellence is and how we can achieve it. Consider the following poem by Marge Piercy: Continue exploring

What is Leadership?

“May I stress the need for courageous, intelligent, and dedicated leadership… Leaders of sound integrity. Leaders not in love with publicity, but in love with justice. Leaders not in love with money, but in love with humanity. Leaders who can subject their particular egos to the greatness of the cause.” -Martin Luther King Jr.

What is leadership? There’s so many takes on it. It is a vague concept. But I think most of us know what it looks like when we experience good leadership. Here’s a story:

Continue exploring

9 Industrial Engineering Principles You Can Apply to Your Life

All fields of engineering are not only valuable but interesting. However, Industrial Engineering is perhaps the least understood. It’s never quite clear what one does. It’s an essential field that glues it all together, kind of like a liaison between engineering fields, business, and life. Most importantly, Industrial Engineering has many skills that you can directly apply to your life without getting too technical and can serve as guiding principles. Let’s explore these 9 Industrial Engineering principles: Continue exploring

Parenting and Life 2

Parenting has kept me in awe. To become a dad or a mom is profound. It’s difficult to explain. It’s a series of feelings you can hardly imagine before you become a parent. When you become one, it is such an honor, it’s so beautiful and permanent. Not only at birth, but ever after there’s a constant flood of feelings, learning, and challenges. And this leads me to ask the questions: What does it mean to be a parent? What is my role or duty as a dad? Continue exploring

How to Be More Confident

The 3 C’s to build more confidence

At a seminar, I once heard that knowledge can be divided into three categories: the things that you know that you know, what you know that you don’t know, and what you don’t know that you don’t know. We can definitely feel very confident in certain areas but not so much in others. Naturally, the more we know about a specific domain, the more confident we tend to feel about it. Continue exploring

Character Over Skills

Why character matters most

Finding out how to develop skills, face setbacks, and continue learning is always both interesting and intriguing. However, I’ve noticed with time that character tends to have a more profound impact on anything we do. Character traits are fundamentally more important than skill-sets or degrees. Skills certainly help forge character, but it is character that persists despite setbacks and moves forward. Continue exploring

Finding Strength in Your Weaknesses

Rethinking Weakness in Work and Life

We’ve all experienced the most popular interview question ever: “What is your weakness?” Nearly everyone prepares an answer to the question. And there’s certainly no shortage of advice on how to respond. I’ve heard answers like: “I’m a perfectionist, and it gets in the way.” Honestly, I think that question might actually be more useful for finding out how genuine someone is than anything else. However, finding strength in your weaknesses is not only overlooked but is often dismissed as unimportant. So why do our perceived weaknesses and strengths matter? Let’s find out. Continue exploring

Chess and Life: The Real Value of Chess

Chess is an incredible game, and it teaches you far more than just strategy. With every chess puzzle you struggle to solve, you can learn a little bit more about your own thinking processes, patterns, and biases. As we’ll see, chess can be very helpful in life too. Life unfolds as a series of decisions—just like chess. Continue exploring

The Best Advice I Ever Got at School

Why Assumptions Can Cost You Everything

Going to University offers a lot of benefits. These benefits are of course widely accepted in our society. Education is at the heart of how our society functions. It includes who you get to meet, which friends you make, what skills you end up learning, and of course, the diploma. However, the best advice I got at school involved none of these. Continue exploring

The Best Advice I Ever Got at Work

How To Overcome Excuses

The work culture was great. It was empowering. We had the power to do what needed to be done if we could justify it. We had commitments at the beginning of each week and accountability at the end. Of course, we couldn’t always deliver on our commitments. Whether these commitment goals were reasonable was another story. Sometimes I wanted more, sometimes I was pushed for more. But that’s not what the advice was exactly about. Continue exploring

The 10th Chess Principle You Can Apply to Your Life

Awhile ago, in 9 Chess Principles You Can Apply to Your Life, we explored how chess principles mimic life and how they offer valuable insights to our lives. A few years later, I realized a very important principle was missing: break the rules.

Chess is a beautiful game and will continue to be one of the most intriguing games, sports, and forms of art. So let’s consider the 10th chess principle for a more strategic lifestyle: Continue exploring

9 Brewing Principles You Can Apply to Your Life

Brewing is a beautiful process that dates back as far as 5,000 B.C. It is believed to be the first and oldest recipe in human history. It began with ancient Egyptians, later medieval brewers, after with abbey monks, and it continues today by many home brewers and breweries across the world. As brewers learn and become more experienced by brewing many batches and refining their brewing principles, certain patterns begin to emerge. Brewing principles often mimic life and offer valuable insights. Consider the following for a more strategic lifestyle:
Continue exploring

Doing Nothing: How It Works, and Why It Matters

Queen Elizabeth II: “It doesn’t feel right, as Head of State, to do nothing.”

Queen Mary: “It is exactly right.”

Queen Elizabeth II: “Is it? But surely doing nothing is no job at all?”

Queen Mary: “To do nothing is the hardest job of all. And it will take every ounce of energy that you have.”

-Dialogue is from The Crown TV Series Season 1, Episode 4, 53m:59s

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Parenting and Life

Modernity tries to convince you that having children is not good for the world. Intellectuals have unending arguments about why you shouldn’t have kids. They say: “It’s bad for the environment, humans are destroying the world,” or “We don’t need more poverty in the world,” or “Who wants to deal with a crying baby?” etc. They might be right, but they’re also wrong. Intellectuals always think they know better. Conflating the macro and the micro is not the same thing: whether or not you believe resources are scarce has nothing to do with the parenting experience. No amount of reasoning can help escape the wonders of what parenting brings. Continue exploring

Quick and Easy Guide to Keep Moving Forward

Oftentimes we feel like we’re stuck. We want to move forward but, you know, it’s just hard. Sometimes I wonder: could moving forward be easier than it seems? Perhaps we overthink things, or maybe we just complicate the way we approach different situations. Certainly, we can benefit from carefully strategizing a plan of action to solve certain problems.

But this insight is not about that. This insight is a quick and easy guide to keep moving forward when everyday obstacles leave us stuck and unable to make progress. Continue exploring

Being and Doing: Why They Can Have a Lasting Impact on Your Life

There is no doubt that understanding what being and doing is, their differences, and how they relate to each other, can have a lasting impact on the quality of your life. We live in an informational era where we are almost exclusively concerned with How-To’s, like how to fix your leaking sink or how to grill salmon. This makes sense because for the first time in history, we have so much access to information, that we can learn most anything and apply a lot of it for our benefit. The fact is that articles that are not How-To just don’t get enough traction. But what about a guideline or a How-To for a fulfilling life? There isn’t one because there’s no step by step on how to live life. Life is too broad, and being tends to be vague and hard to measure.
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6 Effective Ways to Leverage Your Life

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” – Archimedes

If you could change something in your life, what would it be, and how would you do it? It’s romantic to think that we can power through situations, but reality shows that’s not very effective. Often times we just want to work very hard, but that’s neither sustainable nor enjoyable. In some circumstances, will power is just exhausting and easily depleted. However, leveraging your life is not about trying hard, it’s about realizing you could do more and do better with levers. Think of levers as tools you can utilize to have a greater impact with less effort. If you set yourself to find and use these leverage points, you will amplify the quantity and quality of whatever you do. Continue exploring

Books are Powerful

My Top 10 Books.

King Ecbert: “I want to talk to you about books, Alfred.”

Alfred: “Books, Grandfather?”

King Ecbert: “Yes. If you are going to be King one day, you need to understand that books are just as important as swords or plowshares. These are some works by great writers that I read and translated from Latin as a young man. And this, this is a work by Gregory the Great. Now, he asks questions such as, “What kind of man he is or ought to be, who is to rule?” And um… “Can the occupation of power distract the mind of the ruler?””

Alfred: [stares quietly]

King Ecbert: “Yes, well, I can see that you’re bored already.”

Alfred: “No, Grandfather.”

King Ecbert: “No? Oh, well, that’s good. A king should know how to be bored and not show it. Good boy.” Continue exploring

3 Ways to Maximize Your Results

How to optimize results and avoid waste.

Imagine walking into a grocery store and noticing how neatly different sections are organized. Stores are compartmentalizing gurus. Of course, stores scrutinize where to place each aisle in order to make the most profit. They focus on ease of navigation and flow. For instance, you’re more likely to buy beverages if you first walk through the produce section. Costco will offer their rotisserie chicken for a bargain, but they have it placed all the way at the back of the warehouse. They know how to maximize results, and in this insight we’ll explore how you can benefit from this strategy too. Continue exploring

3 Simple Strategies to Face Difficult Situations

What can the tundra teach you about thriving in harsh environments?

We tend to believe that facing difficult situations is all about having thick skin. But is it? Could we face difficult situations better? The tundra hides an important lesson: there is always a way to face challenges in a more affirmative manner. In the most adverse weather, the tundra’s flora and fauna learns when to expand and when to contract. To grow as a human being requires adversity to a certain extent. To celebrate requires effort first. You must learn how to plant the seeds now that you want to harvest later. These 3 simple strategies to face difficult situations will show you how life thrives even in one of the harshest climates of the world and what you can learn from it. Continue exploring

26 Proverbs to Ignite Wisdom in Your Life

What do you get when you package the collective wisdom of people into a phrase? A proverb. The following proverbs are a collection of proverbs from most regions in the world. As you read them, see if any given proverb inspires you to change something, to widen your perspective, or simply to enjoy the wisdom civilizations have passed down to us! Here are the 26 proverbs to ignite wisdom in your life: Continue exploring

3 Simple Ways to Find Opportunity

How to accelerate your success.

There’s way too much focus on failure. A not so old saying claims you need to fail X amount of times before you can succeed. Success and failure doesn’t have to be so binary. Furthermore, what’s intriguing about unexploited strengths and opportunities is how you can miss them. If you’re too focused on improving your weaknesses, you forget you have unique strengths. How can you find opportunities only by focusing on your weaknesses? With big projects, when do you exactly fail? Why wait until the final failure? Opportunities are vehicles to accelerate your success if you’re able to find them. Let’s explore 3 simple ways to find opportunity. Continue exploring

8 Overlooked Life Metrics that Keep You from Success

How life metrics can benefit you.

What metrics does society really care about? To this day, most of our work goes to achieving more or less the same old American dream. You know, the house, the car, and a big backyard. Most people generally will ask you what you do or where you live. This makes sense, because it gives an idea of where you currently are in the American dream. What doesn’t make sense however, is if you go about your own American dream differently and people disapprove. There’s a dissonance between societal metrics and alternative roads to success. So how should you go about monitoring your life? Continue exploring

4 Simple Strategies to Build Your Mental Strength

Did you know that coconuts can travel several thousand miles, float up to 110 days, land on an island, and still be able to germinate? Palm trees have withstood the test of time, going back to the Eocene period. What’s even more fascinating about palm trees? They can endure strong hurricanes! Can we learn from palm trees and tap into this strength? Definitely. We usually like figuring out complicated answers, but it only takes looking outside at Mother Nature to see how she deals with adversity. You’ll learn how to apply 4 simple strategies to build your mental strength. Continue exploring

19 Insightful Quotes Worth a Lifetime!

Quotes are inspiring because they have so much wisdom packed into a phrase. They’re like small reminders from mentors of all walks of life. They can lift you up, guide you, and motivate you. A good quote can be worth a lifetime of wisdom! Here are 19 insightful quotes from people who have influenced and shaped our world:

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Doing vs Taking Action

How to take difficult action and keep at it.

Thunderstorms are highly unpredictable, fascinating, and intense. As the warm, tropical, humid air moves upward, it collides with polar cold fronts. It then quickly condenses into droplets that fall down, growing and crashing into each other to begin what could turn into a thunderstorm. The high-altitude clouds make the sky turn into such interesting colors. Sometimes a deep orange or yellow, and other times purple with a bit of a pink hue. With a bit of luck, you can see lightning from afar as the storm approaches. The nuances between doing vs taking action are subtle yet powerful, like an air mass that doesn’t collide with a cold front vs a focused thunderstorm.
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3 Simple Steps to Create a Personal Mission

How personal missions get you closer to achieve your dreams.

Imagine living several thousand years ago. There would be so many places to discover and things to learn. The maps would have blank spaces, because they were a work-in-progress. How big could the Earth be? What things would be over the horizon? The world was an undiscovered place, and the Europeans sailed out to find out. They went on missions.

16th century evangelists were going on missions. Explorers were going on missions. Conquerors, scientists, and friars set sail. All were serious about their missions. But it’s puzzling how they sailed so confidently into the unknown world. How could they know what resources they would need and how much to take? Where would they land? Did explorers have any systemic way to go about their missions? Continue exploring

The Upside of Symbols

How to Leverage Symbolism

Anywhere you look, you’ll see many symbols: political, religious, social, and commercial symbols.

However, today they’re used almost exclusively by marketing. Companies understand the economic value of having recognized brands and the relationship we have with them. When you think of a brand, you have an image, a perception of its quality, and its service (among other things).

Here’s a thought: Symbols are necessary. Nations have all sorts of symbols like national anthems, holidays, and their coat of arms. Even states have symbols such as the state bird, rock, fruit, motto, etc. Could we be ignoring the power behind symbols? What happens to people without symbols? We’ll see why we need to tap into the upside of symbolism. Continue exploring

3 Ways to Gain Perspective

Lessons from the Grand Canyon.

On a summer visit to Grand Canyon National Park, a park ranger told me: “You know, it’s about perspective. The Copper Canyon in Mexico is deeper and longer than the Grand Canyon, but it’s covered with vegetation. Here, the rock layers show perfectly, which makes it look much more massive. We also have the marketing going for us—the Grand Canyon.” Perspective, like the lack of vegetation in the Grand Canyon, can make a world of difference in how you perceive what you see. In other words, how to gain perspective is about deepening your thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills. Let’s explore 3 ways to gain perspective.
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How to Be Practical at Work

Adopt a brewer’s mind

It’s no surprise that computers are substituting a lot of human work and doing it with more precision and efficiency. And yet, we Sapiens want to become more productive and efficient. What exactly does it mean to be productive? Could my productivity be automated by a machine? For the first time in humanity, we’re facing this dilemma. While there’s much work to be done, and productivity is still of utmost importance, having a brewer’s mind offers some valuable insight and an alternative to blind optimization. Continue exploring

Math is Underrated

How math can propel action and make you a better thinker.

Math is underrated. Because of its analytical nature, we tend to perceive math as a nuisance. As a student, you might have demanded math to be more practical. Some students feel there’s little real-world applications of the math they’ve learned. On the other hand, teachers explain that math helps you become a better problem solver. But math goes beyond problem solving. Continue exploring

How to Enable the Growth Mindset

You have probably heard of the growth mindset. It’s the mindset that helps us embrace the inevitable hurdles we face. But the reality is that sometimes we don’t—it’s elusive when we’re struggling. Can we really have a growth mindset especially when we most need to? How do we enable this growth mindset? There is an excess of advice to be joyful, but we must also face the struggles that come with difficult learning, creative challenges, or starting something new. Continue exploring

Problem Finding: How You Can Become Better At It

We go through many years of school solving all sorts of things. Math, for example, is about becoming better at problem solving. Granted, we do depend heavily on our ability to solve problems. But could it be possible to find problems as well? Nobody wants more problems, yet everyone wants opportunities. Could they go hand in hand? How do some entrepreneurs, parents, or teachers manage to find problems and benefit from them? Perhaps work is not exclusively about solving problems but finding them too. And by no means is problem finding about inviting unnecessary conflict. It’s about the creativity of discovering unaddressed problems we’re not consciously aware we have. An unaddressed problem means there’s an unaddressed opportunity, and the potential to generate value.
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How to Compound Your Effort

How small efforts become lasting structures

Building blocks don’t constitute much on their own, but put together, they can create great structures. Building blocks are often used to explain the most basic unit something is built from. For example, the building blocks of DNA are the nitrogenous bases. The building blocks of a protein? Amino acids. The building blocks of physics? Atoms. Of course, scoping matters. Consider that the building blocks of sentences are words, but the building blocks of words are letters. You’ve probably heard about these analogies at school, but what’s more important is how they can be applied to improve your life. Have you ever thought about your hard work in terms of building blocks? Even more importantly: could you be building anything of substance with them?

Let’s examine how to compound your effort.
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The Present is a Gift (So are the Past and the Future)

They say, “Don’t live in the past, or you’ll be depressed,” and “Don’t live in the future, or you’ll be anxious.” Some people say, “Live at peace in the present.” They say, “Live in the moment.” And “The present is a gift”. My question to you is: What do you think about that? Discarding the past or the future (just like the present) is delusional. First, we must understand that each time frame has costs and benefits. None is better than the others. Having said that: How can we embrace the benefits of the past, present, and future? And how can we better manage the challenges in each time frame to live a better life? Continue exploring

How to Get out of Your Own Way (and Tackle Any Challenge)

Like in football, we want to tackle our challenges head on. We want to find solutions and be proud of how we resolve to meet our challenges at each stage of our lives. You care about the meaning of what you do. But we’re often too much in our heads. To tackle your challenges you must go beyond (or below) this mindset. How to get out of your own way is all about integrating the rest of the body. As much as it’s beneficial to approach your challenges analytically, it can also interfere with simple truths. It’s easy to get too caught up either trying to figure everything out or become too busy—that is, occupied but getting nowhere.
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Choose Themes Over Goals

Following through on your New Year’s resolutions

Why are theme parks so magical? And what exactly do you think triggers those feelings? They can be a source of dreams, joy, and inspiration. A theme park is a specific type of amusement park that offers attractions that can be enjoyed by large groups of people. The parks’ rides, landscape, buildings, and characters are centered on a specific theme or story. Perhaps that’s what makes it magical. Like a theme park, we can leverage the power of themes to set our own mission in this coming year. Continue exploring

9 Chess Principles You Can Apply to Your Life

Chess is a beautiful game that is considered by many to be both an art and a sport. It’s also one of the oldest games in human history. As chess players learn and refine their chess principles through time, certain patterns begin to emerge. Chess principles often mimic life and offer valuable insights. Consider the following for a more strategic lifestyle:
Continue exploring

The Fourth Degree of Gratitude

In the Three Degrees of Gratitude, we explored how to engage in different levels of appreciation. The first degree of gratitude is about developing a habit of saying thank you. The second degree is a state of being in which we express gratitude with a kind gesture. The third degree is about finding gratitude where it’s hard. We especially need to be grateful in difficult times. But is there a more active way we can exercise gratitude?
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How to Discover (and Use) Your Values

If I asked you what your values were, what would you say? If you knew them, would you know what to do with them? Say your value is love, or honesty: how does that help you? Values are indispensable in determining how you live, and how you can live differently. They become more valuable as you clarify what they are and resolve to exercise them. Values are our unspoken standards of the life that we want. We can learn to ignite our values if we invest time and effort to recognize and connect with them.
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Lessons from the Summer Season

How you can take more action without getting burned

The summer season is radiant! After much anticipation, the temperature begins to rise steadily. Slowly, we get more light and more heat. In some regions of North America, it becomes very dry. In others, dark clouds turn into massive storms. Sometimes it’s both. But the sun doesn’t stop. Every day the sun rises relentlessly, and it showers rays of life that appear to expand everything they touch.

Everything grows vigorously. Leaves and needles begin a growth spurt. Nature goes wild in the summer. And it makes us feel alive because of what happens during this season: we get stretched. There are many lessons from the summer season to be learned! Continue exploring

Lessons from the Spring Season

Moving forward.

Spring season is breathtaking: Clouds gather in clusters of gray. The rain drops begin to drum on the soil. But suddenly the sun bursts. And just as fast, it’s gone. Dark clouds intensify in the distant background as the sunlight filters through like a thin film bringing vivid images. The wind gusts unexpectedly, bending trees and scattering seeds. And again, the sun bursts through the clouds. It’s hard to understand what spring is all about. Let’s explore what lessons from the spring season you can learn. Continue exploring

Redefining Struggle with Meaning

Struggling has a bad reputation. It makes us feel uncomfortable, and we just want to avoid it. But it doesn’t have to be this way. When we struggle, what we focus on makes a difference: are we focusing on the painful feelings? Or are we focusing on conscious growth? Often times, it’s the moments when we struggle that push us to stand up, to be our best, and to solve difficult problems. We have all heard the saying: “to step outside your comfort zone.” This reasoning implies that we move away from a place of comfort to a place of struggle. I find this phrase a bit misleading, and I’ll tell you why. However, moving into the learning zone seems to me a sound proposition. Let’s see how redefining struggle with meaning can make a significant difference. Continue exploring

Redefining Self-discipline (and Why it Matters)

Can you imagine what your life would feel like with more self-discipline? What would you do? When you take action on something that matters to you regardless of your immediate impulses—you practice self-discipline. It’s choosing to move forward to act on what you most care about despite hardship, and it feels really good. In fact, we could all use more of it. Every time that we practice self-discipline, we choose to reclaim our life. We pursue our dreams, act on them, and stay motivated when we don’t feel like it. We engage in self-discipline by exercising our willpower and focused attention to choose action over distraction. Continue exploring

How to Seek an Imperfect Life

“Imperfect is a chance for contribution, connection and improvisation. It’s a chance to see the humanity behind the moment you were spending so much energy creating.” – Seth Godin

In 10 Empowering Principles to Live by, we explored that a set of beliefs is what we use to make sense of our world. We feel or think about something, and then our brain compares it to our cognitive map to understand the situation or generate meaning out of it. With time, we adjust those inner rules so that we can navigate our lives more effectively and with more clarity. But what does this have to do with seeking an imperfect life? Continue exploring

Lessons from the Winter Season

An Approach to Compassion

“I realise there’s something incredibly honest about trees in winter, how they’re experts at letting things go.” -Jeffrey McDaniel

It’s winter, and for a few months now the branches have lain bare. Some mammals are hibernating and other species have migrated south for warmer weather. However, humans stick around, turn on the heater, cover up, and wait impatiently for spring. It seems as though winter is something to be endured—but it’s not. Winter has something special to reminds us: life is not just fast-paced doing. Life is also about periods of stillness, compassion, and responsibility. As we’ll see, there are many lessons from the winter season. There is wisdom and power behind it. Continue exploring

10 Empowering Life Principles

Deep down, we all have a set of automatic beliefs we rely on to navigate life. These beliefs shape how we interpret life events, make sense of them, and ultimately how we end up feeling about them. Eventually, they evolve into guiding principles that influence our decisions, attitudes, roles, strategies, and the very methods we live by.

But here’s the thing: is your belief system helping bring out the best in you? Continue exploring

Three Degrees of Effort

A Mindful Path to Growth and Resilience

“Effort and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.” -John F. Kennedy

Have you ever wondered what effort is really about? Do you believe the only path to success is through more effort? Effort isn’t just about spending even more energy, more hours, more work—and more stress. It’s about how we apply energy to get what we truly want. Many people think that effort is about grinding longer and harder. But what if it’s more about alignment and connection than intensity?

The three degrees of effort are an approach to understanding how to apply more strategic effort to act on difficult learning and challenging setbacks. Continue exploring

How to Engage Your Goals Effectively

Engaging your goals asking the right questions.

Do you ever think about how you think? Imagine if we were to portray your thinking process, what would it look like? Daydreaming? A constant chatter? We can’t engage our goals effectively that way. We need to improve our thinking to improve our actions. How we think matters because it affects how we feel and consequently, what we do. In the last insight we explored how to set and achieve goals, and the importance of making them exciting. Now we’ll explore how to engage your goals to make significant progress. Continue exploring

How to Achieve Goals

Find how to set and achieve your goals.

Have you tried to open a coconut with your bare hands? When I was ten years old this is exactly what I wanted to do. It was humid and it was hot at the beach, so I started early. I went searching for a coconut that looked like it had just fallen. I found one, brought it back, and started to work on it! My cousin and I each had one, and we began tearing every little fiber we could get to. After about six hours, I had managed to tear off about half of the coconut’s husk. I was exhausted and my fingertips were numb, but we were determined! We continued the next day. Once we removed most of the husk, we got to the hard shell. Continue exploring

Three Degrees of Gratitude

The first degree of gratitude:

This is when you say, “thanks,” “thank you,” or “I appreciate it,” and you really mean it. It can become a habit. And honestly, we can’t say thank you enough. It’s so easy, and yet so powerful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!

Continue exploring

How Playing More Can Make You More Successful

Start, Stick, and Stay at Anything!

I was destroyed in a chess game. It was Halloween 1998 when I saw some friends playing chess over a bench by the courtyard. They asked me if I wanted to play and I said yes! I thought that I was going to beat them through my “natural” intelligence. I lost. Then I lost again. The following summer, I was determined to learn how to play. I don’t know why, but I was motivated to keep playing, and losing, for about 200 more games. That translated to about 60 hours of practice before I could finally win a game! I’ve probably played over one hundred thousand games since. Today I wonder: what happened that made me start, stick, and stay at it? Let’s look at how playing more can make you more successful. Continue exploring

Lessons from the Autumn Season

Looking Inward.

It’s fall season! The leaves are changing colors. Daylight is getting shorter, and the nights are getting colder. The leaves linger on the branches as they change, and soon they will let go. They will eventually fall and dance their way to the ground. The streets will be blanketed with tones of warmth. It’s winter squash time in all its splendor. Pumpkin patches are now open and pumpkin carving is happening. And while the leaves keep falling throughout this season—the spectacle of autumn invites us to look inward. Autumn is such an special season. Let’s look how lessons from the autumn season abound. Continue exploring

3 Powerful Ways to Reconnect With Your True Self

Do you remember how you felt the last time you saw a big animal in the wild? Did you experience that liberating feeling of being out in the wild? At Rocky Mountain National Park, I came very close to a massive bull elk while hiking. Not too far from the trail, the bull was roaming freely through the woodland. Sensing me, the elk slowly raised his neck and held his head high revealing his huge antlers, with strands of peeling velvet hanging from them. We paused. Then the bull continued roaming and eventually moved on—brushing freely into the forest.

Could this elk help unlock the secret? How can you reconnect with your true self? Continue exploring

Cultivating Personal Growth

Lessons from Triple Crown Blackberries.

In my last U-pick adventure, I came across some Triple Crown blackberries. I instantly noticed the abundance of huge red and black fruit hanging from the bushes. If you were holding one between your thumb and index finger, you would notice the little round obsidian seeds, which look much like grapes in a grapevine. When ripe, they are deeply sweet and juicy with a tart kick—which is typical of a blackberry. However, Triple Crowns have an even bolder, more intense flavor packed into their fruit. Continue exploring

Why Growth Happens over Time

A Lesson from the Athabasca Glacier.

Glaciers are breathtaking. These giants shape the environment through rock abrasion. The Athabasca Glacier carves itself among the Canadian Rockies in an area known as the Columbia Icefield and measures up to 300 meters (980 feet) thick! When I stood there, it was hard for me to grasp the immense, thick layer of ice. It made me wonder how glaciers came to be and what we could learn from them. How exactly does a glacier become such a magnificent, ice-blue wonder? Continue exploring

How to Be a More Dynamic Person

Start Anything!

The journey to becoming dynamic begins with being grounded, with your roots anchored deep in what matters to you personally. Perhaps you’ve even identified your ingredients of strength and passion. Now what? Being dynamic is your next step. You’ll learn how to be a more dynamic person, so you can navigate confidently to pursue what you want. What would you do if there was nothing you couldn’t handle? This is at the core of being dynamic—feeling capable of moving powerfully and trusting in your capacity to adapt, no matter the challenge. Continue exploring

How to Be Your Best Self

You, yourself, and chocolate cake.

Discovering who you are is fun. Becoming your best self, necessary. With the baking elements of a dark chocolate cake, we’ll find out just that. When baking, you’ll learn two things are essential: you need the ingredients that provide the structure (eggs, flour) and those that provide the moisture (fat, sugar). However, the ingredients alone won’t turn into a cake just by themselves—we need to stick them in an oven and bake them. The structure of the cake is what holds it together, but the moisture is what makes you want to eat it! How to be your best self is about structure, moisture, and a baking process. Continue exploring

How to Be Grounded in the Moment

Lessons from the Douglas-fir tree.

Trees are captivating. They spark wonder with their willpower to reach to the stars and withstand high winds. When established, they are able to survive forest fires and they can live for centuries! And all of this is possible in a single spot where the resilient seed once landed. You probably already know the Douglas-fir. It is the preferred Christmas tree because of its elegant conical shape. They’re also a Pacific NW favorite. They dress up mountains beautifully with their vivid evergreen needles that contrast with the snow at the timber line. Most importantly, what can you learn from the Douglas fir? Can it help you learn how to be grounded in the moment? How does a little seed become a tree that can rise to towering heights of over 300 feet? Continue exploring

How Change Happens (and Why)

There’s always something we want to change. But do we? What happens between that gap—the space between the moment we desire to change and the moment we begin it? And more importantly, sustain it? That’s the magic gap. There are so many reasons why we hesitate to start. It’s exhausting. It’s uncertain. Or maybe we’re just too busy. Whatever the case, we have to examine that magic gap more closely. How does change happen? What is the driving force that turns desire into decisive action? Continue exploring

How to Use Labels to Empower Yourself

The upside of labels.

Labeling is one of the first things we do as babies. Our brain learns to associate certain objects with words. We label the iconic red-round-sweet fruit as an apple. And after that it’ll be hard to think of it as anything other than an apple. Once we have enough associations stored in our memory, we begin to develop language. We start with one word. Then we move to a two-word sentence and so on. At some point in our lives, we begin to develop our sense of self. Continue exploring

How to Be More Productive: What To Do When You’re Stuck

“Art is when we do work that matters in a creative way, in a way that touches (people) and changes them for the better.” -Seth Godin

When you’re stuck, productivity isn’t about doing more—it’s about focusing on what moves you. A simple way to reconnect with that inner motivation is to revisit your biggest accomplishments. Why did they matter? Most likely, they mattered because they combined two secret ingredients: you enjoyed doing them, and they contributed to something bigger than yourself. Sometimes, it really is that simple. Continue exploring

The Power of Authenticity

3 Powerful Ways to Be Yourself Without Fear

Did you know Galileo Galilei opposed the Geocentric belief that Earth was at the center of the universe? He believed that Earth revolved around the Sun. In his time though, most educated people (including astronomers) didn’t think so. The Roman Inquisition challenged his work and accused him of heresy! His work aroused controversy. Fortunately for humanity, he followed through with his ideas defending his views. He was eventually tried by the Inquisition, found guilty of heresy, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. Continue exploring