Just a quick reminder that growth does not equal effort (or, at least, the feeling of strenuous effort). As The Secret famously said, grass doesn’t strain to grow. Most humans spend their lives eating, drinking, sleeping, and eliminating waste—not much effort at all, and they grow a lot. Even if you exercise heavily, the muscle growth occurs...
Read MoreWhat matters? It seems like a simple question. But here’s the thing: people every day ask themselves what they want in life or how they can find more meaning in life and never really face that question. They often end up looking around at what other people like and following them. With that approach, they had better hope that they like the same...
Read MoreThe Meaning of Life discusses the eight driving factors that cause a person to find meaning in their life. The first—because it is essentially the meaning of life—is growth. Granted, you need all eight, so it’s a slight oversimplification, but it is the primary point. So that naturally leads to the question of growth without meaning. So let’s...
Read MoreWe all want our lives to be better tomorrow than they are today. That is the nature of life. Life is growth. But how do you get better most effectively—or how do you get to be the best that you can be? The obvious answer is work/effort: to become more fit, you have to exercise. To improve a skill, you have to practice. To get a higher education,...
Read MoreEveryone thinks they just want to live the easy life: being waited on hand and foot, eating junk food and playing video games all day, or living a life without work. People say they want that—no matter how much evidence you provide to the contrary: people who hit the lottery are often miserable or lose it all; animals sit around all day and eat...
Read MoreNote: This blog touches on a hugely controversial topic and is not meant to persuade anyone to change their minds but is rather meant to discuss the various factors in people's understanding of the issue and ethical/legal conclusions that they draw from said understanding. One of the seemingly toughest questions that is actually one of the...
Read MoreOne of the most important things in life is picking a direction and a destination. If growth is the point, then you need to determine what areas of your life you wish to improve and by how much. Since we all only have 24 hours per day, we have to choose how we spend that time to realize our dreams. In short, we need to determine how good we want...
Read More“What do you want to be when you grow up?” It seems like a simple, innocent question. Asking a child this question is either just to make conversation, to get to know them, or to understand what they want to do so you can keep it in mind for where/when you can help them in the future. No matter what the reason, the result is straightforward:...
Read MoreOne of my first ever blog posts was about creating a “life architecture roadmap”—in other words, assessing the current state of your life and identifying your desired future state so that you could create a roadmap filled with practical next steps and milestones to get there. The idea is a play on Enterprise Architecture, a discipline in which...
Read MoreIn the immortal words of Creed Bratton of The Office, “If I can’t SCUBA, then what has this all been about? What am I working toward?” While this is quotation is meant to be funny since a man working an office job (with plenty of references to drugs, murder, and other seedy activities during the workday) for decades was all leading up to a...
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