Apotheosis

Send us Fan Mail When you wake up today, there is a strong chance you will encounter someone rude or antagonistic. Coworkers, employees, bosses, or clients will frustrate you. Politicians will be corrupt, inept, or both. Can you be calm despite these difficulties?  Stoicism teaches us that we are capable of maintaining a tranquil mind – one that is unphased by the challenges we will inevitably fac...

Send us Fan Mail No matter how hard we try, we cannot avoid setbacks, discomfort, or other difficulties in our lives. These turbulent winds will continue to blow no matter how hard we fight against them. In the latest episode of Apotheosis, I explore some Buddhist insights for cultivating calm even when the storms are raging all around us. Pointing out the futility of trying to stop the wind, Budd...

Send us Fan Mail My first night at sea was almost my last. Over 20 years ago, I set sail on a 70 foot sailboat from New York harbor in the middle of January. That night, we were hit by a brutal storm. Snow fell in horizontal sheets while massive waves periodically and unpredictably rose out of the darkness to smash into the deck. I looked out and saw 360 degrees of icy death – there would be no wa...

Send us Fan Mail How much is too much? Or not enough? If we work too hard, we get burned out. Work too little, and we go nowhere. If we’re too fearful, we never take risks and thus miss opportunities. Or if we’re overconfident, we rush into situations that we’re grossly unprepared for and make costly errors.  Finding the answer to this question of “how much?” dates at least back to Aristotle, who...

Send us Fan Mail Imagine you just had the best day ever. You had a major win, everything went your way. You’re floating on cloud nine. But then maybe a coworker said something to undermine your success – just joking, they said, although sure didn’t sound like it. Suddenly all the elation evaporates. One negative remark has the potential to completely derail our happiness. One negative incident out...

Send us Fan Mail Sometimes we can get uncomfortably reminded that we know less than we think. Or that our stories are not as accurate as we once believed. For me, the story was that I was a quiet but dedicated supporter of equality and racial justice. One night a few years back, a woman asked a simple question that opened my eyes to how little I knew. A bit of discomfort can be a helpful reminder...

Send us Fan Mail What does it take to get ahead in the world? Do we need to claw our way to the top, determined to win at all costs? Or can we succeed by bringing others along, working for mutual gain? In this latest episode of the Changemakers’ Field Guide, I explore the value of cooperation through the lens of evolutionary psychology , as part of a series looking at dealing with people. Studying...

Send us Fan Mail One of the first lessons I learned as a young boy also happens to be one of the most important lessons I’ve learned to this day. I was about four or five years old, and my mom sat me down on the edge of the bed one evening. “This is the Golden Rule,” she said, looking me gently in the eyes. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” No doubt I looked confused, and she co...

Send us Fan Mail There’s a good chance you will encounter someone soon that is a pain in your backside. Maybe it’s someone rude in line at the sandwich shop. Or a coworker talking over you at a meeting, undermining your efforts to make themselves look better in front of the boss. Or maybe someone is wrong on the internet. There is no shortage of frustrating behaviors when it comes to dealing with...

Send us Fan Mail I’ve taken a risky stance in this latest episode of the Changemakers’ Field Guide: I’ve gone full moderate on the subject of political divisiveness. I explored some insights from Taoism on the unity of opposites that can help us to find balance in our lives and interactions — not least in the way we interact with people who hold different views. Taoism points to a flow between opp...

Send us Fan Mail If I could choose a superpower, it wouldn’t be speed or strength or lasers out of my eyes. I’d choose something far more practical: immeasurable compassion . The world needs kindness and compassion a heck of a lot more than it needs people who can bend metal with their hands. In this episode of the Changemakers’ Field Guide podcast, I explore the Buddhist concept and practice of c...

Send us Fan Mail Working with people we know and like and see eye-to-eye with is often hard enough. Working to address major issues like climate change raises the stakes – and the difficulties – of collaboration. Competing agendas, unhealthy forms of competition, power imbalances, and dealing with toxic antagonism can stymie our efforts to cooperate our way to success. Effective collaboration is c...

Send us Fan Mail Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow was one of the most influential books I read in the last decade, if not my life. His insights into how our minds work have changed the way I think about decision-making and human interaction in general. In the latest episode of my podcast, the Changemakers’ Field Guide, I explore some of these insights. Understanding some of the biases and...

Send us Fan Mail In the latest episode of the Changemakers’ Field Guide, I travel back in time 200,000 years to the dawn of Homo sapiens . Our ancestors were very good at their jobs of survival. Favorable adaptations in our brains arose due to specific evolutionary pressures, constantly repeated over millions of years. However, the complex world we’re in today definitely doesn’t resemble those con...

Send us Fan Mail To understand the present, we must understand the past. No field of study does this quite like Big History. This emerging discipline looks WAY back in the past, tracing a path from the Big Bang to modern times, with rising complexity at each step of the way. In this episode of the Changemakers’ Field Guide, we take a journey through space and time, exploring some insights from Big...

Send us Fan Mail How do we know when we're exerting enough energy? Or  too much energy? Taoism teaches that we're probably trying far too hard much of the time. Sometimes the softest touch is what is needed, rather than a brute force exertion. This episode presents the Taoist concept of  wu wei , or non-doing. In doing non-doing, we might just do a bit better.

Send us Fan Mail We focus a significant amount of attention on things that can be measured, quantified, or otherwise described (perhaps more so in the Western world). We study these things because we can know them; but in the process, we can lose sight of the unknowable mysteries at the heart of our existence. This episode of the Changemakers’ Field Guide looks at insights from Taoism into the nat...

Send us Fan Mail Many of the problems facing human society seem daunting, monolithic. Issues like poverty, climate change, and inequality are a tangled knot of complexity. The latest episode of the Changemakers’ Field Guide looks at this idea through the lens of Buddhism. I explore the view of interdependence and how it might help us to make sense of these wicked problems.

Send us Fan Mail Many of us get into the fields of conservation, sustainable development, or similar "do-gooder" fields because we want to make a contribution to the world. But it doesn’t take long to realize that some of our most important problems to tackle are some of the hardest to solve. These wicked problems — like poverty, climate change, racism, and many others — are maddeningly...

Send us Fan Mail Even without the anxiety, fear, setbacks, and general crappiness of living through a pandemic, building resilience to bounce back from adversity always has value.  With this in mind, I set out to explore some insights from various traditions on how to build resilience. This episode wraps up a series looking at the concept of resilience from five different perspectives, including B...

Send us Fan Mail Just as we all have our limits, so does nature. This latest episode of the Project Indra Podcast explores the resilience of the natural world — how ecosystems can bounce back following major shocks to the system.  We need to take care of ourselves to fortify our own resilience against adversity. Likewise, we all benefit when we take care of the natural world, working to reduce our...

Send us Fan Mail How does the same stressful incident cause some people to fall apart, while others grow stronger? What conditions help us to bounce back from adversity — is it mostly our mindset and attitude, or are there other factors at play? While previous episodes have explored mindset shifts that support resilience, this fifth episode in the series looks at the neuroscience of resilience.  F...

Send us Fan Mail In this fourth episode on resilience, we explore insights from Viktor Frankl on how we can find meaning in even the worst of circumstances. Doing so can sustain us through tremendous adversity. Our capacity to find meaning gives us the will and the drive to tackle the inevitable challenges we will face. As he describes, "Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find...

Send us Fan Mail “Don’t insist that what happens should happen as you wish; wish that things happen as they do happen. Then your life will go well.” This insight from the Roman philosopher Epictetus captures the Stoic practice of  amor fati - or love of one's fate. When adversity strikes, rather than curse our misfortune, we can embrace these circumstances as if we chose them. We can reframe...

Send us Fan Mail "It's easy to be happy when the sun is shining, and your belly is full" is a common refrain in Tibetan Buddhism. It doesn't matter how calm or happy we are when things are going our way. The true test of wellbeing lies in our response to adversity. How do we respond to crappy weather, hangry bellies, or even worse situations? Every one of us will face setbacks,...