The Savage Philosopher

I see myself as a Savage and a Philosopher. I try not to shy away from the brutality of life, but use the opportunity to learn. These past couple of days have been brutal on my psyche as I am no longer distracted by the normal rhythms of routine. I dig deep into what drives me, I need to accept what I find as my truth (at this time). Then, if I choose, I can change. I spent the most of the day yesterday in a couple different types of meditation in an effort to get to my core, or at least into a deeper part of my subconscious. Results: I am truly happy when I am teaching. The topic of the book I’m going to write is on ‘Small Team Leadership’. I need to understand how to set up systems. Review of Yesterday. Overall, a lot of adulting got done. The dishes, bathroom, laundry, and some of the rooms were tidied up. I wish I could take the credit for all the activity, but to my surprise my kids decided on their own to chip in. They took care of the bathroom and living

Yesterday was mostly successful. I have found that eating one meal a day is very difficult unless I am with people that eat one meal a day (or by myself). Other than that, I did get a couple of blogs out and had the time to research how to write a book and the volunteer opportunities in my area. Every day I seek to learn more about myself and the reasons why I do what I do. Yesterday I struggled to keep my cool while my pre-teen daughter did what pre-teen daughters do, drive their fathers crazy. I was good initially and then got tired of the attitude and then realized that I simply did not have the skills to handle it. So I called the Mom. She brilliantly deescalated the situation and we made it through the rest of the night. What I learned is that I still have some learning to do. So I will add building a stronger relationship and reducing the frustration between me and my daughters to the list of accomplishments I want to have on this reset. Review of Yesterday. As I ment

How to have a kickass day.  I want to take a few moments this evening and talk about how to have a kickass day by creating a morning ritual. The purpose is to prime your day the same way everyday, so that you can have consistent results.  Start the morning right. Here are three simple steps that I use every morning to get ready for the day. Do not be underwhelmed by there simplicity. I recommend you practice them with an experimental mindset and see the results for yourself before you judge them.  1. Make your bed. I get up really early and my wife is still sleeping. This does not stop me from taking my blanket, folding it half long ways, and laying it down on my side of the bed. After I take a moment to smooth it out, I top it off with my pillow. This is the first thing I do right after my feet hit the floor.  This first step is the trigger for the next thing, writing in my gratitude journal. It also puts me into a productive mood. I can say at the end of the day th

Ok, here it is. Day 1 of 17. A small sabbatical to get myself re-centered and upgraded. A time to rebuild who I am, so when I go back to the real world of work and the daily grind, I will be stronger and more capable to take on the world. Or so is the goal. The Plan. I am going to document my next 17 days here as part of a blog series called “Resetting Life”. It will be a way for me to look back on this time in the future and see what parts of this reset took hold in the long term. And of course, this is the best way I know how to share my experiences with you. Here is the list of the bigger accomplishments I want to have by the end of this reset. Some of these may be a little audacious, but that is the point. Consistently execute the One Meal a Day (OMAD) meal plan with a focus on fruit, vegetables , nuts, and seeds with a little bit of chicken or fish chopped in. Workout for an hour every day. Blog at least once a day and increase my subscription to 200

I am inspired to take control of my life from the clutches other people’s obligations and the entrapment of other people’s desires. These are the reasons why I have not found the time nor priority to do this blog, which I love. At first, I thought it was I just out of things to say. A barren dustbowl of topics that I cared about had dried up like the desert. I had said all the things that I could say. In reality, I couldn’t find the time to even think. As I am on the cusp of a two week staycation, I can hear the faint voice of expression. It is as if my mind had been burdened with so much ‘stuff’ that it was being suffocated. In taking my first gasp of air in a long time, I see that it was the weight of the chains put on me that was bringing me down. Like an anchor, I was sinking to the bottom of the sea. I promised in the title that this will be a how-to guide. So here it is; How-to Take Control of Your Life: Step 1: Realize that your depression may not be of your making and

Before we get started, we should first define fear. According to our good friend Webster, fear is “an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger”. If we were to dissect this definition a little, we realize that there are two parts. The first is the “anticipation or awareness of danger”, and the second is the reaction to that perception with a “strong emotion”. This is important because I believe that the reaction is dependent upon the perception. This also gives us a possible lever of control. If we control our perception, than we can control our fear. Basically, we are only afraid of dangers that we know about. If this is true, then we could purposefully redefine what we consider as dangerous. In today’s world we are not normally chased by lions and tigers, but our fears of failure and loss trigger the same emotion. So, if we want to control our lives and make choices (the key to being Human) then we need a way to control our mind to minimiz

Who are the people in your life? Are they the ones that motivate, inspire, and pull you up to your greatness? Are they the ones that draw on your energy, make life harder, and pull you down to your baseness? And, who are you to them? The Human species are social animals and our ability to work as a pack through collaboration is what has allowed us to leap to the top of the food chain. It isn’t our thumbs, squirrels have thumbs. Nor is it our ability to think, lots of animals can think to varying degrees. What has protected our weak flesh, brittle bones, and lack of natural offensive capability (even my cats have claws), is our ability to work together for a common cause. Now that some of us no longer have to struggle to just live everyday, how has our pack/tribe evolved? I’m going to refer to your closest friends as your pack. It is a much more accurate term than tribe due to scale. We would of had the type of pack in the days of survival who are good hunters and would share their sk

I wanted to take a minute and discuss what a typical day for me looks like. This is to emphasis two things. The first is that it takes Willpower to do things you don’t want to do. The second is that the body and spirit has limits. Note, while the daily details change, the amount of effort remains the same for every day I choose to be free. 0400 - Wake up after only getting about three hours of sleep. This happened because I am currently in my transitions class and all the new information is creating a whirlwind of thoughts. I finally lay down, my brain continues to compute my new future. 0400...0600 - I am currently enrolled in the veteran Boots2Business class, and I had to catch up on the homework and watch a 30 minute video. When I was done; I started laundry, shower, get dressed, and wake up the kids for school. 0600...0700 - I struggled to get the kids up, fed, and lunches made. I didn’t have time to actually see them off to school. I had to trust them to leave 15 minutes

Who owns you? To what obligations have you promised? Do you have freedom of choices or freedom of choice? Every day I evaluate my life and try to measure what I am doing to what I believe I can do. I find that most days, my assessment is aligned. If I believe I can do it, then I normally accomplish it. But this makes me wonder about the limitations of belief. What would happen if I suddenly chose to believe that I could do something I never had done before? Let’s say it is something that ‘has’ been done before, just not by me. If I believe that I could do it, then could I? And now let’s take this up to the next level. There are an infinite number things that we could do that haven’t been done yet. How do we assess the reasonable from the impossible? Or is it all possible with enough ingenuity and creativity. These particular Human attributes that define us from the other species on this planet. This takes me back to my original question of ownership. Freedom is the state of belief.

I struggle every day to find a space where my expectations and mindset meets the reality of the rest of the world. The frustration born from this discordance can be overwhelming and seem impassable. When I look around I see the untapped potential of the faces and events around me and I wonder if I have the right to expect that potential to be fulfilled. As some point we must reach a civilized agreement of what we will tolerate from each other. What we will allow to coexist within our space and what we will shun. And with this thought and question lingering I slip into the topic of today’s blog. “Why am I not Batman!” That is right, you heard me. The single indomitable focus to live a life unafraid in the pursuit of a mission and idea greater than oneself. The skill and determination to press hard against life knowing that this maybe the only chance we get to satisfy our higher divine needs. The limitless mindset to go further than anyone has ever before just to say at the end of the

Never quit! I don't care if you woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning and it seems like the world is conspiring against you. Get up! Get out! Get Done! The world is not meant to be easy. It is meant to be brutal. It is meant to shape us into better Humans and show us the difference between surviving and thriving. How many times do we just not feel like doing the things that we had decided to do? And then, after we pressed on anyways, wondered why it was such a struggle to get started?  We have the advantage and disadvantage of being able to assign meaning to the events that occur in our life. You know you have done this when the words, "it was meant to be" escapes your lips. Animals, do not have the cognitive ability for this type of imaginative creative storytelling. So why do we? Is this the first hint that maybe we are something more than just flesh on bone driven by animal instinct. (Notice the period and not the question mark at the end of the last

Seriously, why are you here? Why did you bother to wake up this morning? What drives you to go to work? Is it fear or it is it passion? My purpose today is to give you something to reflect on. I want you to think about how you are living and examine for a moment if you are really living at all. It took me years to have the courage to ask the deeper questions of my existence. And today, I would like to share one small filament that guides me: Choice. The most amazing power we have is the power to choose. The problem is that most of us do not know that we have this power. We assume that our choices are limited to a selection of choices instead of having the unlimited choices. We are told by 'others' that we can choose to do "this" or we can choose to do "that". Our choices normally come in pairs; get a job or go to school, marry the person or move on, buy this house or rent it. This dichotomy is built into the system of life. But why? Why have we 'chose