“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
Tag: writing
Taking The Bait; Abandoning The High Ground
If something is necessary, it can’t be unethical, and if something is unethical it can’t be a necessity. Maybe you can’t see another way, but it’s there. It is never necessary to rape a baby, in other words.
Living In (All) the Moment(s)
I remember all of the things I’ve done and left undone, and I either celebrate them or resolve to do what needs to be done so I can experience these moments of gratitude and presence without conflict.
The FDA’s Assault on Tobacco Consumers
We’ve all heard horror stories about the run-amok regulatory state. Enabled by open-ended statutes passed by Congress and signed by presidents, regulatory agencies have acquired virtual carte blanche to write rules governing peaceful behavior. Even when a seemingly narrow purpose has been set out, regulatory rule-making has engaged in mission-creep with alarming frequency.
What If I Become Evil?
Many people (enough to leave an impression) have worked hard for the good – and then fallen. They become jaded, power-hungry, cruel, hateful, spiteful. They become bitter at the things they work so hard for, and so they turn to destroying those things. We all know there’s a chance of that for any of us.
The Rule of the Edge
In all of my many challenges and habit changes and book writing and learning, I’ve found one thing to be the most powerfully beneficial to all growth, learning and training. I call it the Rule of the Edge. Here’s the rule: practice at your edge most of the time.
The Reformer’s Plight in The Great Idea
I’m a fan of dystopian fiction, but I overlooked Henry Hazlitt’s The Great Idea (subsequently republished as Time Will Run Back) until last December. I feared a long-winded, clunky version of Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson, but I gave it a chance, and my gamble paid off. I read the whole thing (almost 400 pages) on a red-eye flight – feeling wide awake the whole way.
Incarnation: the Forgotten Second Step of Reading a Book
After going out on my own as a young man, I’ve stumbled on, chased down, or survived a range of adventures in human consciousness and action. Those things in books have actually come into my real, non-library life. I’ve learned something from all of this: you haven’t really finished reading a book until you lived it.
The Simple Guide to Creating Habits for a Great Year
It’s a new year, and many of us are looking to make positive changes in our lives. The best way to do that is not by making resolutions, but by creating habits that will stick for the long term. If you want to run a marathon, form the habit of running. If you want to write a novel, form the writing habit. If you want to be more mindful, form the habit of meditation.
New Year: The Beautiful Minimalism of a Blank Slate
Let’s imagine this new year as a blank slate. It’s like an empty house: what would we like to put in it? This is a kind of minimalism. We can start afresh, tossing out everything and only placing in this empty house what we find most important, and nothing more.