ThriveologyPodcast – Thriveology

It seems to be a specialty of mine… getting people UN-stuck.  Which means I spend a fair amount of time noting what gets people stuck in the first place.  Makes sense, right?  If you want to get un-stuck, you need to know why you got stuck. There are some clear reasons why people get stuck. […]

Have you noticed how many books there are in the bookstore on how to be happy? Which raises the question on why, in a recent poll, only 1/3rd of Americans claimed to be happy. We have fallen into the “happiness trap,” chasing after happiness as if that is the goal of life. It isn’t. Over […]

A couple of episodes back, I discussed some lessons I have learned in my less-than-half a year in jiu jitsu.  One of my lessons was about “egoless learning.”  Several people asked what I meant by my ego being involved.  And what’s wrong with that… the ego? Well, the ego tends to trip us up, throughout […]

We always start at survival.  You have to survive to do anything else.  Surviving is based in dealing with scarcity and threats. Sometimes, people get stuck in survival mode… whether it is necessary or not.  For most people, survival mode is less a necessity and more a habit. Then, we live.  Living is about finding […]

Let me be clear:  I can claim NO expertise in jiu jitsu.  I have only been involved since January.  So, what can I possibily tell you about jiu jitsu after just 6 months of practice? Nothing. But I CAN tell you some lessons I have learned from those 6 months.  Not about jiu jitsu, but […]

Forgiving is an important skill.  When we forgive people for hurts and slights in the past, we get to free ourselves from those events. (That skill is so important that I wrote a book about the process I created.  That book comes out in October.) But what about forgiving yourself? Why would you need to […]

Schools have based their teaching model on it.  Little league sports have revamped their approach on it.  Parenting has changed to help it. What is IT? Self-esteem. Which is a great concept, at least in the way Nathanial Branden first proposed it.  Not so much in the way we have come to see it as […]

We all want confidence — SELF-confidence.  We want to be confident before we act.  In other words, I want to feel confident of myself before I move toward something. Or maybe that’s just me!  🙂 But I think that comes at it from the wrong direction.  FEAR seems to be between us and action.  Mostly […]

Rules for Living Series. Ancient Stoics and Latin Christians believed that every day we should “memento mori,” we should remember our death.  This practice was not to contemplate how you might die, but that you will die.  As will I.  And everyone else. Which is what makes life so precious.  And which is what gives value and power to […]

Rules for Living Series. Some people feel that they are at the whims of the world, unable to make a difference in their own lives.  (They often fall into blame and helplessness.) Other people believe that they are fully in charge, their lives entirely in their control. (Ironically, they also often fall into blame — self-blame — and frustration.) […]

Rules For Living Series. “Why don’t they treat me the way I want to be treated?”, my client asked me. So, I asked, “Have you taught them how to treat you?” The silence let me know.  But after a pause, my client said, “I guess it never crossed my mind I needed to do that.” The fact is that […]

Rules For Living Series. Have you ever had that moment when you were doing something or saying something, and there was that other voice in your head… the one questioning why?  Maybe you already knew you were acting in a way you would not want to, or perhaps you were saying something you knew would be hurtful.  But you […]

Rules For Living Series. Have you ever noticed how many times, we get dragged into the past and the pain, even when those hurtful times are over?  Those remnants of the events can keep us stuck, frozen in the hurt and pain. Unless we forgive. That’s a big word, I know.  One that is packed with meaning… and not […]

Rules for Living Series. Losses are painful.  No way around it.  They are also normal. Or to say it differently, loss is a normal part of life.  Not an anomalie.  Part of being alive. And loss leads to grief.  That is our natural reaction to any loss.  Big grief or small grief — that is simply how we process […]

Rules for Living Series. Time is an interesting thing, isn’t it?  How often do we keep reliving the past, and imagining the future?  Unfortunately, when we are caught in the past and the future, the present suffers. As I have watched myself and others, I have noticed the tendency we have in trying to change what has happened.  We […]

Rules of Living Series. Last week, we started in a new series about my own Rules for Living.  These are the rules I try to follow in my efforts to live a thriving life. This week, we head into rule #2:  Be Present In The Present. These days, the buzzword is “mindfulness.”  In reality, our minds tend to be […]

Rules of Living Series. Whenever I am playing a game, I like to know the rules… what I can do and can’t do; what I can get away with, and what will get me into trouble. I have the same feeling about life.  The “rules” are principles or strategies to use when things are tough.  They give me a […]

"Make It Matter". I admit it. Her words have stuck with me for decades now. She told me, “Don’t waste it.” She meant that I shouldn’t waste my time… my life. Just before she died, she told me, “Make it matter.” She wanted to make sure I knew not to waste the precious time I had, and to […]

Last week, I shared some lessons I learned while I was a hospital chaplain at the beginning of my career. In this episode of the podcast, I share another six. That makes a total of ten lessons. But they only scratch the surface.  My hope is to share some of the bigger lessons that emerged […]

It was in the early days of my Master’s degree and my clinical training.  I spent a summer working as a chaplain intern.  Then I joined the staff of the hospital as one of the chaplains. I had the evening shift. Chaplains have a unique position in hospitals.  There to guide the tough times, celebrate […]

We need balance.  Tony Robbins notes that we have several human drives. The first two are where we need balance:  certainty and variety.  We need to be able to count on things in life — that’s certainty.  But we also need new experiences and a change of pace — that’s variety. Too much of one […]

“But where do I start?”, he asked. I was at a conference talking about thriving. I’d spent a good amount of time discussing some principles of thriving. But I could tell it was a bit overwhelming to my new friend. He challenged me, “You said I could thrive, no matter what life is throwing my […]

Those thoughts, they get us into trouble, don’t they? We keep looking for that thing that will make us happy. We think we know. We think that thing, that person, that place, that paycheck, position, etc., etc., will finally do it. Until we get it, get there, have that relationship, or whatever… only to find […]

If you haven’t heard it yet, let me be the first to say, “Happy New Year!”  I doubt I made the cut, but just in case…. One of my favorite things about school, way back when, was that the semester ended.  Each semester stood by itself.  No matter how poorly the semester had gone (and […]

Getting Unstuck. In the last episode, I discussed 3 ways we get stuck. This week, I cover 3 MORE ways we get stuck. As it turns out, we humans are pretty darn creative in how we get ourselves stuck. And how we manage to think it was someone else who did it! So, in this second round […]