Letters To My Son

Life is always opening doors for us, giving us a gift. We just don’t often recognize it. For example, this morning, life gave you an amazing gift of a new day. Many people who are on their last breath would give anything for such a miraculous gift — and yet, we often will take this gift for granted. Fritter it away. Complain about much of it. Why do we waste the opportunity that life has given us?

Today is a new day. Today I am choosing to see my life, everything and everyone in it, through a lens of Love and deep appreciation. I allow myself to be exactly where I am, and others to be exactly where they are. Nothing is wrong. Nothing is broken. Nothing needs to be fixed.

Most people make the mistake of imagining themselves at the scariest part of the journey of their meaningful work — speaking in front of a huge crowd if you want to do public presentations, having an audience of hundreds of thousands of people if you want to write a blog or do a podcast, managing a huge team if you want to run a non-profit organization. But that’s like wanting to be a football pla...

You are upright and drawing air in the year 2020. Despite your problems, your family’s problems, and the world’s problems, this is still a fantastic time to be alive. You are not a helpless infant that life pushes around. You ARE the creator of your life. Every decision was and is yours to make.

Life is opportunity, the world around you is opportunity, some people close their eyes and ignore it. Others choose to see it. Courage is never closing your eyes, everything around you is courage.

There are various ways to prepare yourself for what might come your way, whether that’s a tough work project, a pandemic crisis, the loss of a loved one, an argument with your best friend, losing your job or the zombie apocalypse.

Health care workers aren’t just “heroes.” We’re also scared and exposed. I was so moved by what they wrote. I was emotionally held captive. This is their story.

Things you spent a lot of money on. There is the guilt of getting rid of that item because you spent hundreds (or thousands) of dollars on it. The feeling that you’re wasting that money by giving it away. But you wasted the money when you bought it … holding onto it for longer and not using it doesn’t change that fact. Let go of the sunk-cost fallacy and just cut your losses.

At the same time, it's already possible to see how this outbreak will permanently change our lives. To all this I say, our backs have been against the wall before. As Americans, we fight like we know how to.

Several times in the course of “Man’s Search For Meaning”, Frankl approvingly quotes the words of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: “He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.” He describes poignantly those prisoners who gave up on life, who had lost all hope for a future and were inevitably the first to die. They died less from lack of food or medicine than from lack of hope, lac...

Adversity is a fact of life. Resilience is that ineffable quality that allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back at least as strong as before. Rather than letting difficulties or failure overcome them and drain their resolve, they find a way to rise.

If we’re absolutely honest with ourselves, most of us are only half-committed to most things — in many cases, much less than half-committed. We say that we’re going to change our diet, but are we fully committed? Do we make a meal plan and buy the groceries and clear out the junk food and set time in our calendar to prep meals for the week and change our habit of eating out much of the time? Do we...

Waking up every day is not an obligation or requirement. It's not another test or make or break audition to impress those around you. It's a gift. It's a challenge, it's something to be explored. If the odds of being alive, living breathing are one in 400 trillion. You won. You have, as you sit or stand right now already done the miraculous. So why not cash in?

Do you know what it is to write and direct for yourself? I like to think consciously about my own story, the parable of my life, especially now that I am more than halfway through. I think it’s helpful to take a brief intermission before the second act, and check in with my intentions. I intend for my second act to be all about love.

If your status quo has never been shaken at its foundation, if you've never stopped and questioned the way things are - reality as it is, if you take risks, there will be no fragments to take and rebuild. You will have the tools or capacity to change the world around.

Using the metaphor, the question was, am I watering the weeds in my life, or the flowers? And by the weeds I mean, am I allocating energy to thoughts that are detrimental to what I want. Am I keeping myself in places I don't want to be and in relationships that are counterproductive? Am I thinking about what can go wrong instead of all that can go right? Or am I watering the flowers - the positive...

In real life you create your own probability every day, every minute that goes towards working towards a goal. That means you get closer. Why would you take a snapshot of the present moment in time and use that to define the likelihood that you'll live out your dream someday down the road?

The key is to see this abundance, and feel it in your body. It’s like the abundance of oxygen in the air all around us: it’s limited and precious, but we have plenty of it and can breathe freely and with joy. In some situations, oxygen is so limited that it can be life-threatening … but most of the time, we have more than enough for our needs.

Progress is nothing more than the ability to break big things down into small things. That's it. And those manageable pieces, day in and day out, they become the roadmap to accomplish what ever it is you set out to accomplish.

You can talk about hours spent - routines - habits, but if you aren’t passionate about what you want. If you don’t Immerse yourself in it - None of that really matters. Live How you need to live - do what you need to do - Be who you need to be - to make your dreams real - fully commit to excellence because until you do that - you will only be left with a vision and a false sense of reality.

We’ve all been hurt by another person at some time or another — we were treated badly, trust was broken, hearts were hurt. And while this pain is normal, sometimes that pain lingers for too long. We relive the pain over and over, and have a hard time letting go.

Some turn fear into opportunity. Others avoid the unknown. Some never stop learning. Others think they have all the answers.

So imagine as you continue this walk outside and you think about your dreams. The things that fear kept you from becoming, because on your last day alive in the face of death, you'll probably realize that the worst possible scenario wasn't as scary as you thought.

Right now, is about execution. It's about taking all those hours, and turning them into the best version of yourself - today is about being better than you ever dreamed you could be. These are the moments you live for.

When the path is uncertain we seek out footprints from journeys that occurred Long ago. opinions from people who know no better than us. We look for things that can’t be given, but must be made.