“Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on… I hope you never have to think about anything as much as I think about you.”
— Jonathan Safran Foer

In the final decade of his life, my grandfather woke up every single day at 7AM, picked a fresh wild flower on his morning walk, and took it to my grandmother.  One morning, I decided to go with him to see her.  And as he placed the flower on her gravestone, he looked up at me and said, “I just wish I had picked her a fresh flower every morning when she was alive.  She really would have loved that.”

As you can imagine, my grandfather’s words touched a nerve in me.  And over the years I’ve often reflected on what he said that morning, and how his sentiment relates to everyone and everything I care about.  God willing, in 40 years when I’m in the midst of my 80’s, I don’t want to sit with needless regrets.  I don’t want to wish I had done things differently – especially something as simple, yet meaningful, as picking wild flowers for the love of my life.  Don’t you agree?

Regardless of your age or where you are in life right now, perhaps you will generally resonate with my thoughts here – some things I don’t want to regret down the road… [Read more…]

Let’s end this crazy year with a quick story about life…

Tragedy strikes a woman who isn’t yet old. A minivan traveling toward her on a dark mountain highway hits her car nearly head-on just after sunset. She grips her steering wheel as hard as she can and veers into the rocky mountainside until her car screeches to a halt. The minivan flips onto its side and skids in the other direction off a cliff, plummeting nearly 500 feet to the ground below. Inside, a young family of five on their way to grandma’s house for New Year’s Eve.

The woman doesn’t recall the events that followed during the next several days. She doesn’t recall the three eye witnesses who comforted her and assured her that it wasn’t her fault—that the other driver had swerved into her lane. She doesn’t recall how she got to the emergency room or the fact that she stayed there for over a week, well into the New Year, to treat a [Read more…]

As you struggle forward in the days and weeks ahead, remind yourself, it is far better to be exhausted from lots of effort, learning and growth, than it is to be tired of doing absolutely nothing.

In 1914, the great inventor Thomas Edison experienced a devastating hardship. His entire laboratory burned down to the ground, and several years worth of his work was ruined.

Newspapers described the situation as “the worst thing to happen to Edison!”

But that wasn’t true, because Edison didn’t see it that way at all. The inventor instead chose to see his circumstances as an invigorating opportunity to rebuild and re-examine much of his current work. In fact, Edison reportedly said shortly after the fire, “Thank goodness all our mistakes were burned up. Now we can start again fresh.” And that’s exactly what he and his team did.

Think about how this relates to your life.

How many times have you heard it was the end, when it was really the beginning?

How many hopeless labels have been slapped over your inner hope?

Probably more often than you realize.

The truth is, [Read more…]

In the midst of particularly hard days when I feel that I can’t endure, I remind myself that my track record for getting through hard days is 100% so far.

On my birthday many moons ago, when Google and I were both a lot younger, I Googled “how to change your life when you’re burning out” to see what would come up. I had been feeling hopelessly trapped in a cycle of busyness—like I was racing around in circles every day without any meaningful progress. And it was time to find a better roadmap because I was literally getting depressed with the same old grind.

Granted, I was working 60+ hours a week, struggling with a failing business, and coping with the recent deaths of two loved ones. The stress and pace of life just seemed to keep me busy from sunrise to midnight every day without much time for self-reflection or mindfulness, and deep down I knew the head-spinning, circular path I was on wasn’t sustainable.

As I scrolled through Google’s search results I was fascinated by the [Read more…]