Author Archives: John

The best time to meditate is when you least want to.

The best time to observe yourself is when you least want to.

The best time to plan out the day is when you least want to.

The best time to exercise is when you least want to.

More than rides and sights

Disneyland’s joy is in the

20,000 steps

We can work on having more compassion for others and being more direct with them. They are not opposite things, even if we may feel like they conflict.

The only way to flaunt your wealth is to diminish it. Buying designer clothes or extravagant cars decreases your riches.

Wealth is accumulated by minimizing the times you show it off.

When someone drops a dish or spills a drink, people often yell in response: “Why did you need that!!?” Or they gasp with anger: “I can’t believe you did that!!”

How shortsighted.

There is no reason to criticize an accident because it’s not a mistake to be corrected. If criticism is meant to improve people, it doesn’t work with accidents. How are they to learn from something they didn’t consciously do?

Criticism is effective when given to intentional acts. People can take feedback from what they decided previously and adjust for the future.

Criticizing accidents, outcomes that the actors did not want to happen, is unhelpful and makes people feel small. This criticism isn’t helpful, it’s egotistical. Be wary of the effect your remarks have, both in the feelings in the moment and the actions in the future. It’s often far more about the former, but the latter is what matters more. Feedback and criticism are meant to help people, not make them feel belittled.

I heard a great line from a documentary today: “Love is given, but respect and trust are earned.”

It’s easy to think that admiration is just love. But it’s also respect and trust, which are not guaranteed and cannot be achieved through shortcuts. Just because love is the biggest variable doesn’t mean it’s the only part of the equation. Love on its own is incomplete. So don’t think you can rely only on its power. True admiration requires more.

There are many categories for the things we do: hobbies, jobs, side hustles, sports, activities. But I think there should be another category: restorations.

We should take time to develop the things that we know restore us. We should have tools ready and available for when times are difficult, for situations when we may only have a minute or two to reset.

And just as the great athlete draws upon years of practice in an important game, we must draw upon our restoration to reset at critical moments. A breath or meditation practice is all for the moment of mindfulness or presence of one full breath. The practice needs to be every day for the single moment of difficulty.

Cultivate your restorations.

Believing in redemption for others gives us hope that we can be redeemed as well. Without this, we are resigned to a world where our lowest moment defines us. And worse yet, we succumb to the belief that there’s nothing we can do about it.

Redemption is powerful, most of all for ourselves. We can change and make things right, even though we can never make things perfect.

This is why the stories we consume matter. Stories that say that redemption is not possible have a hollow rot at the center. They are defeatist and do not honor the full capacity of the human experience. They limit us.

 Look for different stories. Like Bryan Stevenson said, we are more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.