living pono, congruence, authenticity, presence and mana
Who has NOT heard it? If you want to be creative, the ubiquitous They tell us, you have to “think outside of the box.” The only problem is, it takes a different mindset to get out of that other-people-imposed box than our more usual ones. It makes sense that you do need to train yourself to climb or crawl out of that box in the same way that you train yourself to do some sort of physical discipline or other…
Poets give each other weird gifts. About ten or so years ago, a friend of mine gifted me with a chewy metaphor that I’ve gnawed on for a while now. He said he thought that, at birth, every person got issued two infinitely expandable notebooks. He said one of the books was a YES-book and the other was a NO-book. I imagined them to be like the kind I use for making my journals but with automatic pages or something…
It’s likely that anyone who is serious about the art of investing money has at least looked at author Bud Labitan’s fan book, THE FOUR FILTERS INVENTION OF WARREN BUFFETT AND CHARLIE MUNGER, which first hit the bookstores in 2008. It lays out the thinking processes these acclaimed money-meisters used to frame and make their financial decisions as they built fabulous fortunes for themselves and their clients. These “filters” are the rules-of-thumb Buffet and Munger developed to help them make…
Throughout the ages humans have gnawed on the conundrum of getting to “happy.” We know we want it. We’ll do a lot to get there, we say, as we set up and set out on some course of action or other to “pursue” our own kind of happy. There are whole libraries of wisdom-words from past generations of sages and wise guys, from the research and cogitations of scientists and other smarty-pants over the past half a century, as well…
When you’re a poet, words and phrases can have a powerful effect on you. Words are more than simple vehicles for communication. Certain words and combinations of words really “speak” to you. They can grab you by the throat and drag you down strange alleys. They can tangle up your feet and make you fall. They can lift you up and help you fly. Getting enchanted and be-spelled by words is probably one of the biggest hazards of the ancient…
“Sanctuary” is a word derived from the Latin, “sanctarium,” which means “a container that keeps a cherished or sacred thing safe.” The word, as used by the Greco-Romans referred to places of holiness or safety. Even though the word is often traced only as far as the Greek and Roman empires and their temples, the concept of a place of refuge is universal. It appears in almost all of the cultural and spiritual traditions from all over the world and…
I bet you’ve heard it more than a time or two, from moms, dads, assorted other relatives, besties, advisers and counselors of all sorts. “Be yourself,” we’re urged, and the person telling us this stuff usually has a kind of self-righteous look on their face, as if they’ve imparted some grand wisdom saying or other. You’ve probably even given out this specious piece of advice your own self – usually to someone who has been plucking at the one single…
It occurred to me that the most effective “time management” stance is basically saying “no” to all the things you’re asked to do – either by your own self or by other people — until you get to a thing to which you can or want or have to say “yes.” The “yes” is your “Go.” Ideally whatever task pulls that “yes” from you is one that you think will make some sort of difference in your life – one…
Expectations shape our lives. Expectations are the stories that we tell ourselves when we wake up in the morning and begin walking through our days and nights. They can either help provide the motivation for us to get out of bed or make us want to pull the covers back over our heads. Expectations are the stories into which we fit our actions as we move along our journeys by ourselves and with others to our own projected destinations. Not…
I’ve got some news for you: Just because you are “eccentric” (weird, quirky, odd, freakish, peculiar, unorthodox, unconventional, different…whatever you want to call that thing you do), it does NOT necessarily mean you are a Creative. It does not indicate that you are Innovative and/or a Genius. Got some other news for you: It’s all good anyhow.
