Think Queerly

A friend of mine recently came out on his 40th birthday. Not that he wasn't gay until that time. He was. But because of his family, how he was raised, his religion, and other reasons, he has kept his identity private. He hid in plain sight.  When my friend came out publicly on his birthday, in a video message on Facebook, he got lots of love from those who understood and supported him. His message...

As mentioned in the episode, here are the... 6 Questions to Identify Your Red-Line Emotions To get the most out of the live webinar, consider and answer the questions below. They are the perfect primer for what to expect and will make it easier for you to complete the practices that I will teach during the webinar. What is the single biggest struggle, challenge, or problem in your life that also c...

The call to cancel Canada Day is a kind of cancel culture error that seeks to eliminate discussion, suppress voices, and ultimately only create more division through silence. It’s like trying to repair the silencing of the past by creating silence in the current moment. Click here to read the post or watch the video version of today's episode . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more infor...

Living with pride means living fully and freely out (of the closet) with acceptance and peace of mind. Living with pride is about how you use your difference — your uniqueness — to make a positive difference in your world and in the lives of others. We don’t have to be divisive to make a difference. Seeking only to make a difference, without consideration for the consequences, may not create a mor...

Jeffry J. Iovannone joins me on this week’s episode for an expanded discussion about his latest article titled, “ Madeline Davis’s Queer History of Buffalo .” Read the complete show notes here:  " We Have a Past, But Not a History." The Various Dimensions of LGBTQ History, Leadership, and Community ." P.S. What happens when we do things together? I'm excited to announce a new program, the " Queer...

Today's episode of Think Queerly goes much deeper into the concepts expressed in my article, " The Path of Self-Mastery ." I discuss the concepts of mutually arising dualities and the idea of 'not forcing' as expressed in the Tao Te Ching. I explain the usefulness of water as a metaphor in the Tao to express 'being in the flow' (which is how you avoid resistance). Then, I pull everything together...

One of my passions is to inspire LGBTQ+ people to connect with their creative genius and use their unique potential to make an equitable difference in the world. That passion sparks a flame that burns bright within me, but what’s the opposite? The darkness of course, but in the context of doing inspired work, the opposite is boredom, frustration, and procrastination — the death of joy, creativity,...

The idea that insults, prejudicial or racist language is a form of violence is a highly problematic one that needs to be addressed. If we change the definition of violence so that the simple use of words could be used to ruin the life of another person, we create a slippery slope with no end towards a permanently polarized world built entirely upon an " us vs. them" mortal dichotomy. We need to ma...

Your purpose can be found in your lived experience if you obverse your past through a lens of self-awareness and acceptance.  When you live in alignment with what’s most important to you — like your values and beliefs — you will tap into the wisdom of what you already know about your own life. This will make living your purpose natural, compelling, and exciting. Do you know what your purpose is? I...

Success Is Not an End-Destination, It’s a Measure of Progress If you don’t accomplish a goal, does that make you unsuccessful and a failure? If your actions are too stressful, it’s human nature to fight, flee, or freeze. The solution is to do less to reduce or eliminate stress. Failure and success are not dualistic.  This is why people get stressed out about failing. Success as a measurement is a...

Gay, Straight, or Queer, We All Want Love. We all want to be connected with others, to be cared for, and to be accepted for who we are. To different degrees, that’s what we call love. Your beliefs about relationships affect your experience of love, compassion, and self-acceptance. Until you clearly define your beliefs about what is true about things like dating, sex, and relationships, you won’t k...

Lachlan Smith grew up in Australia before moving to the UK in his early twenties. Growing up, he was a passionate cricketer and a fan. After coming out, he gave up the sport, not seeing it as compatible with being a gay man.  Having rediscovered his passion for the game in his late thirties, Lachlan came out at his new club and has since enjoyed his time there. However, something was missing. In 2...

About two months ago, I decided to withhold Part IV of my “Where You Stand” moral philosophy article series. It was titled, “Towards a Harmonizing, Universal Morality Based in the Tao Te Ching.” It was close to 4,500 words and I had submitted it to one of the philosophy publications on Medium. The article felt like something approaching a philosophy — or at least an approach to living with persona...

Take a few, deep breaths and then get curious about why you feel that way. Being curious isn't going to solve all your problems. However, being curious is great for your state of mind and for the humility and self-awareness that comes into play - especially when you are truly open-minded and genuinely curious to learn and improve your skillfulness. Instead of making excuses, seek to be curious ins...

In this episode of Think Queerly, I speak with Jon Carl Lewis, the founder of Sex and the Gay Christian. He is also one of my coaching clients. Jon Carl Lewis has studied theology, scripture, discernment, and ethics at Princeton Theological Seminary, Harvard Divinity School and General Theological Seminary. He is currently in training to be a spiritual director, which immerses him in contemplative...

In a recent coaching session, my client asked me to send instructions on how to craft his "statements of self-truth." He was telling me about using affirmations and trying to think positive. We had a discussion about how those words and actions are mostly meaningless because they don't connect with truth. The truth is, we can improve who we are and how we feel about ourselves by accepting our curr...

The cliché, “ Success leaves clues ” is telling. Success is nothing more than a process of completed actions that accumulate like the run-out sands in an hourglass and manifest as the accomplishment of one’s desired goal. In this episode, I discuss: Why success isn't an end-destination. The negative effects of shame on success (which lead to "feeling" like a failure). If you don't accomplish a goa...

This Personal Evolution Practice supports both parts of my Success & Failure article series. You can read Part I on Curious, Your Understanding of the Meaning of Failure Could Be the Reason for Unrealized Goals and Dreams , or listen on the Think Queerly Podcast, episode 176 . The Desired Outcome of this Personal Evolution Process: DEFINE : To help you understand why you believe you failed at a pa...

In today's episode, I discuss, The meanings of failure that have nothing to do with personal accomplishment. I ask if failure is really a lack of success? How failure is a misunderstood and misapplied word I wonder what would happen if we replaced the word failure with something else? Why any task or action that doesn't work out as planned could be called a 'missed-take.' The difference between fa...

If you create something, but there’s no one to appreciate it, is there a point?  If your initial desire was to make money, not having an audience is a problem.  But what if you are compelled from something deep within who you are?  What if you can’t help yourself but to dive deep into a subject that gives you life? Many creatives have struggled with those questions, but what do you do? What are yo...

It’s not death that we are afraid of, it’s living. We hold ourselves back from living fully, playfully, authentically, unabashedly, and freely. We waste our lives planning for a moment when our consciousness will cease to exist. Is that not ironic, if not a paradox? Why then are we afraid of living? " The Fear Of Death Is Illogical — What We Are Actually Afraid Of Is Living " Darren Stehle is a co...

In this episode, I dive deep into the nature of dualities from a Taoist perspective and speak to the synthesis and harmonization of opposites — better expressed as dualities. I quote Wing-Tsit Chan’s translation of the second verse of the Tao Te Ching (from “The Way of Lao Tzu”).  “Being and non-being produce each other; Difficult and easy compliment each other; Long and short contrast each other;...

In part I and part II of this series (the previous episode, 171) I discussed the qualities that define our humanity and support one’s integrity. These qualities include your character traits, core values, and beliefs. Knowing these qualities support what you stand for in life, but without a meaningful purpose, you won’t have clarity or direction about where you’re going in life and why. In this ep...

Do You Know the Qualities that Support Your Integrity — Your Foundation in Life? There are many things that define our humanity. What I share in this episode are the qualities that aspire to our moral choices and our personal leadership. These are, Your natural and desired character traits; Your core values, which essentially the character traits that you judge to be the most important in your lif...

In this deeply personal episode, I share my thoughts about how far we have come, and how far we still have to go regarding universal human dignity. Throughout history, humans have exercised and practiced various forms of control, which Yuval Noah Harari refers to as the myths that create our culture in his book, " Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind ." These controls have dictated who belongs an...