Intentional Tuesdays

The phrase work-life balance has been around for a long, long time.  I’ve always struggled with this phrase for a few reasons.  For me, the boundary between work and life feels arbitrary and unhelpful.  If you think of work and life as separate and distinct, it is inevitable to experience tension between them.  At the same time, I appreciate that work and life have a meaningful distinction for most people, so we’ll come back to this topic some other day.

For now, let’s focus on this idea of ‘balance’.  Dictionary.com offers two definitions:

1. An even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady
2. A condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions.  

There are things about these definitions that I like and things that I don’t, as they apply to Life Design.  I like the idea of keeping something ‘upright and steady’, as a metaphor for our Life Design.  Upright and steady feels like something we should aspire towards.  M...

When was the last time you changed your mind about something?  I’m not talking about some in-the-moment decision, like ordering the steak or the quinoas salad.  I’m talking about changing your mind on an important topic or even changing one of your core beliefs.  I asked myself this question…when was the last time that I changed my mind?  The answer was alarming.

I’ll save the deep exploration of my own thinking for the video portion of this post.  Suffice to say, I found it really difficult to come up with examples where I changed my mind on a significant topic. This surprised me, because I see myself as an open-minded person.  If that is true, then why don’t I have a bunch of examples where I changed my mind?  Is it because I’m just on the right side of the argument most of the time?  Wait, don’t answer that.

Let’s talk about the phenomenon of changing our minds.  To keep us on track, I’ll focus on three key questions:

• Why do we resist changing our minds?
• What are the implicati
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Are you the type of person who holds a grudge?  What does it really mean to hold a grudge and what benefit do we get when we do?  What are the costs of holding a grudge?  Is there a better alternative?  If any of these questions pique your interest, then grab yourself a coffee and stick around a while.  It’s about to get real in here.

Grudge vs. Forgiveness vs. Revenge

Let’s start with a few definitions. 

• Dictionary.com defines ‘grudge’ as a persistent feeling of ill will or resentment resulting from past insult or injury.  
• Dictionary.com defines ‘forgive’ as granting pardon for an offense and to cease feeling resentment for an offense. 
• Dictionary.com defines 'revenge' as enacting punishment for an offense.

As I read these definitions, I was struck by the polarity.  If someone commits some kind of transgression against me, I can hold a grudge, presumably indefinitely.  This doesn’t sound very appealing. Do I really want to hold a persistent feeling of ill will or resentm...

Have you ever found yourself avoiding an important topic because you fear how the conversation may go? This is something that I struggle with from time to time and I always feel a twinge of inauthenticity whenever I avoid a difficult conversation. Why then, do I often choose to avoid the conversation even though I know I’ll feel bad for having done so?

Most people, myself included, prefer to avoid conflict. We instinctively avoid topics of discussion where we’re likely to encounter opposing opinions and perspectives. We prefer to stay on safe ground. We talk about the weather. We talk about what we did last weekend. We talk about sports. The other stuff can get messy. Why bother getting into that? 

Messy is all that matters.

Life gets boring when we all agree on everything. The sky is blue. The Earth is flat. Dinner is at 7. These are facts, objectively observed and identically recorded by all parties. Although conversations around these topics can be perfectly pleasant, they do...

I love a good debate, but I think that one of my biggest areas for personal growth is my ability to preserve the relationship while advocating my position.  I often find myself so wrapped up in making my case that I forget I am engaged in conversation with another human.  My attention is consumed by ensuring the soundness of my argument rather than the soundness of the connection between us.  Although I may end up getting the conversational upper-hand, I do so at the cost of damaging the relationship.  Why do I allow this to happen?  It happens because I am choosing the wrong mode of discourse.  I am using debate even though I rarely find myself in a situation that requires true debate.  Normal, everyday situations require dialog.  These two words, debate and dialog, sound alike but they are very different both in their form and in their purpose.  Debate is a formal argument, the point of which is to persuade, although the target of your persuasion may an audience and not even your fel...

There are only two human emotions that matter: Love and Fear.  The rest are simply variations of these.  Every important decision we make is reducible to either Love, Fear, or a combination of both.  When I first encountered this proposition, many years ago, I thought the concept was so simple that it was not worth my attention. Still, I experimented with the concept and that is when I realized the simplicity is what makes it so powerful.  By examining your decisions and actions through the lenses of Love and Fear you will become more skillful at navigating the most challenging situations.  

First, we’ll start with a simple definition of Love and Fear.  I think we each have an embodied sense of what these words mean, but I think these definitions will help to establish a common baseline.  The biggest resistance that I get when I suggest there are only two emotions is that people feel there are other emotions that don’t reduce to these two.  This is where a common set of definitions wi...