#198 – What is possible when the world doesn't bother you?Does noise – or unwanted sound – drive you crazy?Noise irritability, research consistently shows, correlates with high scores in the personality aspect "Neuroticism."As mentioned in a 201...
#197 – Who would you be if you could handle rejection?The ability to handle (i.e. ignore) rejection is the most powerful tool anyone who aspires to true freedom must hone.When I was a teenager, many dancing clubs in Madrid didn't let in people weari...
#196 – What do you need that you're avoiding?I'll tell you about me: for years, I moped about being a writer who didn't write – woe is me, how I suffer!I ignored that part of myself because... I ignored that part of myself. Period. I had created my o...
#195 – What do you need?Back in coaching school, we debated a seemingly simple choice to open a session: "what do you want?" or "what do you need?"What would be a more effective question to inquire about the session's focus? And what were the differe...
#194 – What do you want?This question is easy to answer, for the most part. We all want things – a better job, more money, more happiness. To write a book, start a business, learn to play pickleball. But the deeper, more important question is, what d...
#193 – Why do we go with other people's "right?"One day, driving around my Madrid neighborhood with my mother, I realized why I allowed her (and other people) to "get it their way." If I was sure that "my way" was the "right" way, allowing them...
#192 – What do you work for?Essentially, I see three focus points when it comes to performing any activity – although it's especially true in creative endeavors. We could view them as three stages on our way to creative freedom, or true mastery.1. Yo...
#190 – "Right" according to whom?When you’re a rule-follower, you look for rules everywhere. If you go off-track, you fear you'll get you lost, so you seek out gurus and teachers to show you the “right” way – which, to your obedient mind, is the only...
#190 – Who pushes you to shake things up?One of the sneakiest ghosts is the Ghost of Stability Boredom (GoSB). It makes you believe that being bored with "the habitual" is natural and so you don't think twice before toppling your own house of cards.C...
#189 – What makes uncertainty so hard to handle?This morning, while doing my 20-minute writing practice, I stumbled upon the fact that uncertainty is making me suffer. I'd noticed how I had engaged in "escape" activities such as:Looking for houses to...