The End of Inner Drama: How to Break Free from Compulsive Thinking

Most of thel problems in our lives are generated by our thinking mind. When we’re depressed, we are constantly thinking dark, negative thoughts. When we’re anxious, we’re constantly thinking insecure, anxious thoughts. When we’re caught in the drama of life, we are usually retelling that story of drama in our minds, again and again. To be free from this compulsive thinking is to be free from much of the suffering…

50 Days in the Wild: A Meditation Experiment That Transformed Me

I had dreams of people visiting me in the forest and feeling like, "Oh no, I broke the rules," and they were trying to tempt me to come back to society. But it was one of the most beautiful, profound, enlightening experiences of my life that I would never trade for anything.When I was a kid, I remember hearing that Jesus of Nazareth went into the desert for 40 days…

Holding Grudges is Self-Sabotage

Most of us take life too seriously. We put so much pressure on ourselves that it hurts our ability to do our best. Because we know that when we are relaxed, we are confident, we're not second-guessing ourselves, and we are thinking in the clearest way possible. When fear and pressure cloud our judgment, we are not going to be our best."Holding grudges" is such a great phrase, because we…

Why You Always Need to Be Around People: Understanding Emotional Dependency

Q: I need to be accompanied by friends all the time. I am so desperate and needy and unhappy. Help!Human beings are social. We're social creatures; we thrive with close connections. And it is because we needed each other to survive. So, we are naturally drawn to those close bonds that make us feel safe. Sometimes, when we have felt unsafe, we may use friends and pets and other devices…

How to Emotionally Recover from a Negative Experience

Changing our mindset changes our reality because our reality is created by our perception. The way we see the world, the way we see our life unfolding, determines how we feel about our lives and shapes how we think about the situations happening around us, those we often call “happening to me.”If we are peaceful, life appears peaceful to us because we stay at peace in our mind. We don't…

When Life Feels Out of Control: How to Regain Peace and Clarity

Life only gets out of control when the doing is out of balance with the being. Therefore, when we are constantly doing, constantly receiving a bombardment of information and messages from society, from advertising to social media to the friends and family we are surrounded with, we are always being bombarded with trillions of informational data points that the brain processes and uses to create a model of the universe around…

How to Keep Unkind Words from Hurting You

You may not know it, but I am by nature a very private person. Even on my spiritual journey that took me around the world, I never posted about my travels. I understand the stress that social media can cause when people see others posting their travel photos, and I didn’t want to contribute to that.But then I met the remarkable woman who would become my wife. She was shocked…

Peace Begins With You

The world we live in is designed by each of us. We are each totally responsible for the world. You are humanity, you are society, you are the universe.  Consciousness is the home you live in. You are its creator and caretaker. So, what does all this mumbo jumbo mean? Well, it means that if you see people as enemies, you have created the illusion of enemies. It means that…

Break Free from the Game of Telephone (Part 2)

In my last newsletter I talked about 3 ways to win at life’s game of telephone, and how to stop letting other people plant thoughts in our head. Today I want to talk about how to trust ourself and follow our heart.Whether it’s our own thoughts or the words from other people, it’s just noise. That which goes beyond words is what’s true. People have been developing opinions for thousands…

Life Is a Game of Telephone. Here’s How to Win

Have you ever wondered how much you know, how much you think you know, and how much you think you know because someone else thinks so?The information we have bouncing around in our brains is divided into three categories: what we experience first hand, what we hear from others, and what we believe about the things we hear.99% of our information (totally made up statistic) comes from other people — the…