Last Spring my daughter Sarah called me asking if I'd come out to Los Angeles to run a marathon with her. Sunday at six thirty in the morning Sarah and I are being dropped off in the registration area and I ask, “How many people are running?” “A couple of thousand I guess...” she says. “It’s a lot more than that,” I said looking around at the masses that were registering, … [Read more...]
I went to High School with a kid whose dad was a famous football coach at Arizona State University. In fact, Frank Kush was the highly successful head coach of ASU football for 21 years -until he got caught punching a student athlete in the face. Through it all Kush remained justified when he said, “It’s my job to win football games, put people in the stadium and make money for the … [Read more...]
“Daddy can we have an ice cream cone?” “Sure”, I said much to the shock of both my kids and their two friends. “Why don’t you go in and pick out anything you want.” “Can we really?” Came the chorus of four shocked and bewildered children. I smiled broadly and said with encouragement, “Sure, anything!” In an instant my weary kids came to life as if they’d never had … [Read more...]
For thousands and thousands of year’s man has been living on a spinning blue ball that circles the sun. Yet, even in the 21st century we still can’t address; why, what or how we got here. It’s ironic that most six-year olds can tell you where they live but we can’t in turn tell our children how we collectively came to be. There are stories, traditions and beliefs but those substitutes … [Read more...]
Passion is a powerful element that’s occasionally pushed down to a lowly adjective describing a noun. Using the word as an adjective like; passionate lover or passionate zealot, isn't what we will be discussing here. Real passion is fuel. In every success you will observe passion as a key ingredient. So, how does passion benefit you? To understand passion you must also appreciate … [Read more...]
In an effort to be seen you and I will do almost anything. This desire starts very young when every boy or girl craves the attention of his or her parents. A perfect example of this need is observed in the puppet scene in the classic movie The Sound of Music. Here we have all six children participating as musical voices for their respective puppets in an effort to catch the eye of their … [Read more...]
It's amazing what's on this list and what's not. The things that we think will give us pleasure (i.e. money) interestingly didn't even make this list. We asked everyone attending to the Hawaii Retreat to offer at least 20 every day. In the end we had well over a 1,000 posts of to our wall of simple pleasures. The exercise is delightfully sneaky in how easy it is to begin focusing on those … [Read more...]
You’ve got a problem. Your mind wants to be in control of everything. It plays endless war game scenarios almost exclusively in negative thought. Emergency alarms constantly sound in fear that aren’t real and never will be. Your mind wants to dominate you through rules, limits and emotion. Your mind’s nature is overwhelmingly defensive. In fact, so much so, that you’re lucky … [Read more...]
Minutes after being dropped off at College I was asked to a party. As a new freshman I felt excited and yet uncertain about attending “The Last Bash Before Summer Ends.” It was the night before classes began and while tempted, I decided not to go. I figured there would be other parties. Truthfully, I had no idea. I was already juggling a lot; my parent’s divorce, living on … [Read more...]
As he watched the birds fly, a young Indian boy named Devdan wished he too could soar above the surrounding cliffs. Scaling the mountain was hard work; well at least that’s what his elders had told him. And he believed them, too. Children in his tribe were prohibited from even attempting the climb, so Devdan had practiced hiking much smaller hills in preparation for the time when he would … [Read more...]
