ZEN PENCILS – 120. TERENCE McKENNA: Nature loves courage. There’s a great deal of truth to this. I’m no great believer in the Law of Attraction; simply wanting something, even believing in it to your toenails, isn’t sufficient to make it reality. You have to make the effort, work your ever-lovin’ tail off, prioritize what […]
Turning Point: 40-year-old cancer survivor prepares for special marathon – TwinCities.com. Cyndi Elias has courage. Take a look at her t-shirt as you’re reading this article. After everything she’s been through, she’s now taken on one of the toughest athletic challenges a human can do. This summer, she ran a 26.2-mile leg of the Million […]
Life sucks sometimes, and that’s that. Oh, there are all sorts of coaches and cheerleaders and counselors and bloggers out there telling us that our attitude is a choice, that we can rise above our circumstances if we can just convince ourselves to be happy–or barring that, pretending to be happy until we start feeling […]
In late 2011, I decided to run a marathon. I researched shoes, planned routes, and found a training plan I liked. I talked to a friend who was into competitive triathlon about ways to train safely and got some excellent pointers. I picked a race to give myself a deadline. And I started running. And […]
A Carrot, An Egg and a Cup of Coffee. I’m a sucker for a good metaphor, and this one resonates with me. The carrot and the egg are both changed by adversity (the boiling water) without producing much change in their environments, but the coffee changes its environment even as the environment changes it. It’s […]
November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. It’s a month of challenge for writers; those who choose to participate make it their goal to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. That’s 1667 words per day for 30 days. 1667 words is a lot of writing for a day, especially if […]
Loving someone else may be the most courageous act many of us will ever take. Movies, music, books, popular culture–they all teach us love is supposed to be easy. We’re supposed to meet our soulmate, have that immediate connection, then bam! nothing matters from that moment on except that we love each other and we […]
I love reading. Since I was about eight years old, one of my favorite ways to be entertained is to kick back with a good book. I don’t read nearly as much now as I did then, of course, but I think it’s fair to say I still read more than most folks. One of […]
I’ve followed Simon Sinek for a couple of years now. Not because his philosophy is all about courage–like most folks, he doesn’t really talk about it. He teaches that leaders, effective organizations, winners all start with a simple question: Why? For Sinek, the critical question isn’t what we’re going to produce, or what service we’re […]
Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities… because it is the quality which guarantees all others. Winston Churchill I don’t usually consider myself a man of courage. I’m more often the man who watches others, wishing I had their courage, berating myself over everything I could accomplish if I were just brave […]