People generally think of habits as bad things they want to break. On the contrary, creating habits that you want is what creating a life you want means. It’s a big part anyway. Creating habits you want frees you from trying to do things all the time. It frees you from using your limited willpower. I wrote yesterday about making behaviors you like habitual using your relationships. Today I’ll write[…] Keep reading →

Today’s pictures were from the Grand People’s Study House, a giant library overlooking the Taedong River, with the Juche Tower on the other side. Sorry for how long some captions are. I formatted them to be more readable but WordPress seems to ignore the formatting. I hope you can read them okay anyway. Nearly all big public buildings we visited had big statues of Kim Il Sung, Kim Jung Il,[…] Keep reading →

Most people can think of reasons not to visit North Korea. Most people consider the place dangerous. They have imprisoned foreigners for life for things that we wouldn’t consider illegal here, and you have no right to due process. For starters. What do you get from visiting? If you travel to explore new places, North Korea is one of the few frontiers left that tourists haven’t overrun. Tourists are even[…] Keep reading →

Speaking of mental chatter, most people get one of its properties backward. Doing nothing isn’t boring; it’s overwhelming. People think of doing nothing as boring, as in devoid of anything to think about or do. On the contrary, doing nothing generally overwhelms your awareness. Most people’s minds give them more to think about than they can handle. You turn on the television or read a book when you have nothing[…] Keep reading →

This post continues my About page. Where to find more The best place to find more, besides contacting me, is one of my seminars or classes. If I haven’t posted about an upcoming one recently, check with me for something coming up. Here are some sources that have been influential or inspirational to me (just names of people and books now, I’ll put in links soon). Business Marshall Goldsmith –[…] Keep reading →

People use too much lingo. What do I mean by too much? I mean it when big or out-of-context words confuse more than illuminate or create meaning. Everybody knows it, we still do it more than we mean to. I’m going to examine the issue from a few perspectives. Having a background in science I see a lot of scientific sounding language where it seems people use it more to[…] Keep reading →

By the second day of silence at last week’s five-day meditation retreat, the mental static of everyday thoughts had mostly passed. During the 9am-11am session we switched techniques from focusing on breathing to scanning the body for sensations and letting them pass. After one or two scans I found I could hardly sense anything subtler than, say, my shirt on my arm. Frustrating. Another scan brought me back to my[…] Keep reading →