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If There’s a Solution, Why Worry? Here’s What That Actually Means
“If a problem can be solved, what reason is there to be upset? If there is no possible solution, what use is there in being sad?” — Shantideva, A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life That’s how Shantideva said it, but the version that I have always heard goes more like this: if there’s…
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How Momentum Really Builds
“When torrential water tosses boulders, it is because of its momentum.” — Sun Tzu, The Art of War A single drop of water isn’t moving a boulder. But put enough water behind it, moving in the same direction, and something that looks almost powerless on its own becomes capable of moving something enormously heavy. That’s…
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The Snake Doesn’t Hate Its Old Skin
“The snake does not hate its old skin. It simply knows it cannot grow inside it.” — Unknown I think sometimes we make moving on from something more complicated than it needs to be because we feel like we have to find something wrong with it first. If we’re going to leave a job, change…
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Are you staying because you want the support, or because you’re afraid of what happens without it?
There’s something about the movie, The Shawshank Redemption, I never thought much about until recently. I watched it again for the first time since going through a structured fitness and coaching program, and this time it made me really reflect on that experience. There’s a name for what happens to some of the men in…
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You Were Never in Control of That
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” — Marcus Aurelius We spend a ridiculous amount of energy trying to control things that were never ours to control. What somebody…
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Bruce Lee’s “Die to Yesterday” Quote and Why Most People Never Let Go
“To express yourself in freedom, you must die to everything of yesterday. From the ‘old’, you derive security; from the ‘new’, you gain the flow.” — Bruce Lee Most of us stay attached to the old version of ourselves because it’s familiar, it’s worked, and it’s kept us safe. We can’t build the new version…
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Was Someone Controlling Me, or Was It Just Me?
I remember when someone in the fitness program I belonged to was going through a divorce, and his wife, somewhere in the middle of it, accused him of being in a cult. He mentioned it in our group chat, and because I already had a vision in my head of what a cult was, my…
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Master of His Soul
“A man likes to believe he is master of his soul. But as long as he is unable to control his moods and emotions, or to be conscious of the myriad secret ways in which unconscious factors insinuate themselves into his arrangements and decisions, he is certainly not his own master.” — Carl Jung We…
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He Will Win Who Knows When to Fight
“He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.” — Sun Tzu When I first read this, it made sense. Choose your battles, know what’s worth fighting for and what isn’t. Pretty straightforward, and something most of us already understand. But the more I thought about it, the more I recognized…
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And Then What?
This is a continuation of “Find the Meaning First”. If you’re landing here first, that’s the piece to read before this one. “Man cannot stand a meaningless life.” – Carl Jung I recently wrote a post about three of Jung’s quotes, including this one, and shared it with the UnderGround, a group that I am…
Midlife Transformation & Personal Growth
