Alchemy For Life

Passion Everyone talks about passion. For a long time, you were told to follow your passion. I talked about passion in Job, Career or Calling a few years ago. Obviously passions are good as they give us that energy we need, but there are a lot of things we are not told about them. Multiple passions But what if you have more than one passion? And what if you have more than one like? And what if you...

Google Gemini Gemini is Google’s version of ChatGPT . It’s a large language model (LLM) that thinks and responds naturally. You can have conversations, ask for advice, ask it to play a part, and even ask it to generate images. That’s where my journey began. I asked it to generate a few images. This led to a discussion about Bias. Bias You see, Gemini’s handlers have you cov...

Down days It’s normal for people to have down days, to have times in which they become less than motivated. it’s also normal to find yourself without purpose here and there. Sure, you have a purpose—you have good old Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to keep you going. Are ya hungry? In pain? Do you need to make money? Do you need a hug today (the answer is always yes). But there are m...

Did I catch you in time? Every year I tell you not to make resolutions—not because I don’t want you to set goals, but because resolutions (at least the style of setting goals) traditionally have a fantastic failure rate. So, before you make them (or if you’ve made them, before you try to execute them) listen to this, and it may be what actually allows you to make it happen. In fact, I&...

AI & ChatGPT* A language model uses a special kind of learning to conduct a ‘probability distribution’ over words used to predict the most likely next word in a sentence based on the previous entry. Language models learn from text and can be used for producing original responses (both short and very long), predicting the next word in a text, speech recognition, optical character re...

There are a lot of lists out there for how to obtain happiness, productivity, etc. As you know Alchemy for Life™ is exactly about that too. So, I’d like to not only share some of these principals, but tell you about my real world experience with them as well as what you will encounter by utilizing them. In other words, what the reality is of these things. Ikigai – the intersection of a...

“There’s no wrong way to do it…” Have you ever been given that advice? Did it make sense to you? Did it set you at ease? No, me neither. Let me tell you why that is the worst advice you can give someone who is trying to improve their craft, and why you NEVER hear it from anyone who is accomplished at what they do. Let’s talk about creatives, getting better at what you...

Do you have a catalog? if you call yourself a creative, then it is important to catalog your work. In that, I mean to take a step back and see the various foundations you’ve built. It’s a good idea anyway to take a step back, as many creators have to ask Does This Suck? (See the podcast episode of the same name if you’re having this issue). My catalog – putting aside my fic...

Attitude is everything That’s one of those phrases we have heard to death and to the point that it’s lost any real meaning, hasn’t it? If you’re like me you might even cringe at it and just wave it off as mind-over-matter kind of nonsense—even if it has made a difference in your life. I want to talk about that, but specific to consuming media, and even more specific to read...

Triangulation Triangulation is the process by which you use more than one location to find the location of something. I point gets distance, two points gets position on the ground, three points gets altitude. That’s exactly how GPS works—the more satellites the better the accuracy. Imagine Limiting Belief You hear this all the time in the motivational and coaching circles. When you hear that...

Start with awareness As with every episode we start with an awareness. In this case it’s an awareness of the fact that we are always gathering knowledge. Thermostats My thermostat tells me the humidity if I walk over to it, but even though I can ask and manipulate the temperature, I can’t ask about the humidity. So it has the knowledge, but it can’t impart it. You’re a huma...

Great storms announce themselves with a single breeze, and a single random spark can ignite the fires of rebellion.  Bishop of Aquila – Ladyhawke (1985) A great quote from one of my all-time favorite movies. You may even say it was an influence on The Sword and the Sunflower . But that statement really makes you think about a major event, and how it “announces” itself. That...

Retooling It’s been a bit because I’ve been busy exploring different media avenues. In addition to the podcast I’ve been exploring video shorts for Youtube, and small digestible video bites for Instagram and Facebook. So, welcome back! And check them out on my Facebook as well as my Instagram. Being succinct, overcommunicating Something a lot of people struggle with is over commu...

https://youtube.com/shorts/St1VfM64o04?si=kunlp9zPirKVzMM8 What is ceremony? If you look it up you’ll be told it is a “ritual observance or procedure.” Most cases refer to weddings, and that’s good because that’s the example I used in the podcast. Why do I want more in my life? You want more if you’re trying to make a habit stick, or something is important to yo...

A reminder on the voices We use three voices to communicate with ourselves  AND  others. Even if you get that you may not realize that not only can someone’s second voice be speaking to you, but  you  might be using  your  second voice to speak to  them . Confused? Here’s a reminder for those who haven’t read  Three Voices . Your Third Voice – Your speaking...

Most people think of self care and self love as the same thing. It’s all about you, being nice to you, doing nice things for you. Right? And it has a bit of stigma attached to it to easily make the average person (especially males) feel, well, just selfish about the whole dang thing. It’s not selfish, it’s vitally important to your mental, emotional and even physical health. It&#...

I decided to make the text for this episode an outline vs. a long form article to match the podcast. Did you like this better? I. Introduction: A. Overview of the topic: the mind’s ability to recall negative experiences with ease (Negativity-Bias) B. Purpose of the story: exploring the reasons why negative experiences are easily remembered and the ways to shift towards a more positive outloo...

Three Voices If you’ve read Three Voices then you know we all have three voices that we all use to communicate with ourselves and others. As a refresher and for those who have not read the book, our first voice is our speaking voice, our second is also regarded as our “inner monolog” or “the voices in our head” or even a replay of a conversation . Seeing it out in the...

What’s wrong with me? / Intro to this thing My unspoken perception (my first voice*) is as follows.  I am not saying this is correct, and in most of this it certainly is not, but here it is.   There’s this thing .  People who have overcome this have always struck me as… more adult than me.  They seem more mature, more developed.  But also perhaps more anal retentive?...

Review of our most helpful episodes. From Interviews to a unique take on word meanings, to turning negatives to positives (and maybe vice versa) you don’t want to miss this. The Complete AFL Episode Guide: A Catalog of All Our Episodes Welcome to The Complete Alchemy for Life™ Episode Guide, where I give you a comprehensive overview of all the episodes in our podcast. In this episode, I&#821...

Shorting yourself on time-based skills You’ve heard this before right? That as you get better and better at something, you can do it more efficiently. So your skill is just as good as your competitor but you do it faster. great! Except that you charge hourly. So now they are getting better for less, and you are getting… shorted. What’s the real amount of time it takes though? Let...

Measuring We recently talked about measuring, and now we’re talking about NOT doing it. Programs running We have many programs running. We are always tasting, listening, looking, sampling… and measuring. Did you stop measuring? “Hi, I’m Mr. Scale! I’m going to disappoint you every day.” 👀 It’s pretty easy to stop measuring when it comes to that particular...

Tension We’ve talked about tension before. We’ve talked about tension vs. something being at rest and what that means for us. But now I want to talk about the tension of disagreement. Everything’s going to be OK Everything is going to be OK. Does that relieve you? It might, especially if it comes from a higher status individual . But it doesn’t really do anything. It’...

A simple answer for a complex issue… doesn’t work Did you ever have an issue with someone and tell a friend about it? They usually say “Oh well I would just say this .” You roll your eyes , take a deep breath, and attempt to explain that this is pretty complicated, and that you’ve already tried that. You could go back and forth or you could just make a note to not men...

The 30,000 foot view You’ve heard of that phrase— taking the 30,000 foot view , right? But what exactly does that mean? Does it mean to take a step back? Does it mean 30,000 steps back? Considering the big picture? How long do you do this? Do you then zoom back in and if so how long do you have to wait? Managing task, career, projects, etc. It is when you are managing things that you come up...