12/7   I am grateful for:   The ability to write these gratitudes everyday (that I remember) and not judging myself too harshly usually if I fail to do so The quiet cold mornings at the cabin Learning again and again to forgive myself Lifelong friends This is how I began today…..shortly after building a […]

I have recently decided to challenge myself in a very concrete way. I am on a mission to make it until lunch without judging. I am determined to wake up one day and get all the way to my midday meal without having judged anything or anyone up until that point in the day. I

Yet another useful lesson we can learn from the world of finance. And like any good lesson, it has numerous ways we can apply it to our life. First, let’s look at how we can use this to improve our overall mental well being.   Rather than focusing on the half dozen things that we

Sitting there staring at a blank sheet of paper. And just sitting. I learned a long time ago how to overcome this foe. Just write. Simply write….write anything. Write I am so bored and politics suck and the Mariners are finally in first place. (I wrote this a month ago, the Mariners did not make

Yet another life lesson I have recently learned from my wife, “you do you”. Like most useful things, there is much to unpack here. It is analogous to “just forgive”. The real benefit of forgiving is in the freedom it affords the one doing the forgiving. It only looks like we are doing it for

I had been on the Ptarmigan Ridge trail over a dozen times before. I had already hiked it this season. Hiking in the Pacific Northwest involves checking multiple weather forecasts and smoke forecasts and hiking reports and transportation updates, and having the time and being healthy. The stars were aligned last Thursday. My wife and

I’ve really been struggling with this. I believe that I do the “right” thing most of the time, at least as often as the average person, for whatever that is worth. We will just assume of course that there is always a “right” thing which of course isn’t true! But, I know I don’t always

Yet again I wonder how normal I am? Are others as terrified of stepping, let alone leaping outside their comfort zone as I am? Do others even have comfort zones….or is the entire world their comfort zone? Would I swap my comfort zone(s) for yours? What would I trade in order to gain access to

Okay, this title is rather self-explanatory. The end. No, really, so very much depends on how you look at things. Even spectacularly important big things, things that seem so obviously “good” or “bad”. Maybe a better way to say this is everything is relative, but that seems to scare or offend many people. Remember, there

I’ve stumbled upon another liberating yet terrifying realization after years of searching and reading and hiking and receiving counseling. And with nearly everything I write, this is my learned non-professional understanding, so who knows how real it really is. So there!   Self is a projection. Self is purely a mental model, a story. Self