When Was the Last Time Reality Tested Your Confidence? Recently I was talking with a friend who’s a black belt instructor at a martial arts school in London. He was telling me about a rough day on the mat. One of his good buddies had really put it on him during training. And I mean really put it on him. One of those days where nothing works. Every time you try something, your partner has the answer. Every escape gets shut down. Every opening closes before you can get to it. You know that...
about 2 hours ago • 11 min read
Are You Collecting Golden Eggs or Building Golden Geese? How to build enough assets to support the life you actually want. A recent conversation with my friend Paul got me thinking about something I wish someone had explained to me when I was younger. We were talking about the old story of the goose that laid the golden eggs. You know how it goes. A farmer discovers that one of his geese is laying golden eggs. Every day, another egg. Every day, more wealth. But eventually, he gets impatient....
about 14 hours ago • 13 min read
Are You Collecting Golden Eggs or Building Golden Geese? How to build enough assets to support the life you actually want. A recent conversation with my friend Paul got me thinking about something I wish someone had explained to me when I was younger. We were talking about the old story of the goose that laid the golden eggs. You know how it goes. A farmer discovers that one of his geese is laying golden eggs. Every day, another egg. Every day, more wealth. But eventually, he gets impatient....
1 day ago • 13 min read
Learning to Breathe Under Pressure "Attempt the impossible so the difficult becomes easy." Have you ever noticed how easy it is to stay calm when everything is going your way? You’re relaxed. You’re thinking clearly. You feel grounded. You know exactly how you’d handle a difficult conversation, a confrontation, or an unexpected problem. Then something actually happens. Somebody challenges you. A problem catches you off guard. You’re criticized, embarrassed, or overwhelmed. And all that...
2 days ago • 11 min read
What Three Years on the BJJ Mat Have Taught Me Sometimes the skill that helps you survive one stage of life is the very skill you have to move beyond to reach the next. I joined Meraki Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu on October 2, 2023. By the time you’re reading this, I’ve been training there fairly consistently for just over three years. And I’ve learned something about myself I wasn’t expecting. I’ve gotten pretty good at surviving. Not winning. Not dominating. Not submitting everybody who gets in my...
2 days ago • 11 min read
What Three Years on the BJJ Mat Have Taught Me Sometimes the skill that helps you survive one stage of life is the very skill you have to move beyond to reach the next. I joined Meraki Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu on October 2, 2023. By the time you’re reading this, I’ve been training there fairly consistently for just over three years. And I’ve learned something about myself I wasn’t expecting. I’ve gotten pretty good at surviving. Not winning. Not dominating. Not submitting everybody who gets in my...
4 days ago • 11 min read
You Don’t Have to Be Right to Be a Strong Man Don't Sweat the Small Stuff and It's All Small Stuff by Richard Carlson Years ago I read a book called Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff… and It’s All Small Stuff, by Richard Carlson. Great book. Simple lessons. The kind of writing that makes you wonder why something so obvious wasn’t obvious to you before. Carlson died far too young. I wish he’d had more years to write, because he had a gift for taking something complicated about human behavior and...
4 days ago • 10 min read
How I Used Dumb AI to Become a Smarter Voter After 43 years of voting, I finally felt like I understood every choice on my ballot. And I have an unreliable AI apprentice to thank for it. I’ve been voting since I was 18. That’s more than four decades of elections, candidates, propositions, judges, and political promises. And I’ll admit something. For most of those years, I didn’t feel nearly as informed as I wanted to be. I voted. I cared. I tried to do my homework. But there was always more...
5 days ago • 10 min read
Trust Yourself to Handle It There’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. How much of our lives do we spend trying to make sure nothing bad happens? We want our jobs to be secure. We want our relationships to be stable. We want enough money in the bank that an unexpected expense doesn’t ruin the month. We want the people around us to behave the way we expect, and we want tomorrow to look enough like today that we can make plans and feel safe. There’s nothing wrong with wanting...
6 days ago • 10 min read
How to Be a Badass Without Being a Bully For a good part of my life, I was a dick. Not because I wanted to hurt people. Not because I thought bullying was a good way to get things done. I was a dick because I was determined to be good at what I did, and I wasn’t going to let anybody get in my way. I wanted to be capable. I wanted to be reliable. I wanted to be the guy who could get things done. And I got pretty damn good at it. But somewhere along the way, I confused being responsible for my...
7 days ago • 9 min read