A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how I had been practising mindfulness, but I wasn’t sure that there were any concrete benefits yet. This weekend, I was involved in a fender bender. A driver in the right line decided he wanted to make a ninety degree left hand turn without checking to see…
When I tell people that I visualize, some of them give me a skeptical glance. I think many people associate the concept of visualization as some kind of hocus pocus that people employ with The Law of Attraction. You visualize something that you want to happen and miraculously it happens. I haven’t tried that kind…
Is there such a thing as talent? Does it exist? The more I think about it, the less likely I think it is. There’s definitely skill acquisition, but I think talent is a myth. I think we call people talented because we see the result of their hard work and perseverance. And because we see…
When I went away to university, I never thought about the impact my absence might have on my parents. I was going off on a new adventure. Life beckoned and I answered the call. I missed my family, but I never really thought about how they might have missed me. After school, I came back…
At the end of 2014, I started what I called the Genius Project. The idea was to explore the concept of putting in 10,000 hours of work and using deliberate practice towards my playwriting to achieve mastery or become a “genius” in that realm. For just over a year, I kept track of the activities…
I think I’m a treadmill snob. When I go to the gym, my favourite thing to do is run on the treadmill. I’ve always preferred cardio to weights and running is my go-to activity for cardio. But sometimes I go a little crazy inside when I see someone doing this “thing”: They crank up the…
When someone cuts me off while driving, they are a jerk. If I cut someone else off, it’s because I am in a rush or I have an important appointment. We judge others by their behaviour, but we judge ourselves by our intent. The thing is, other people judge us by our behaviour, not by…
When I was working at the WSIB and hating my job, I kept telling my friend Drew that “I didn’t want to work here.” He sagely told me that it is better to run towards something than to run away from something. His logic was that if I didn’t pick something better that I wanted…
In January, I listened to the podcast The Moment with Brian Koppleman. He was interviewing Seth Godin, who I’ve heard interviewed many times. What was interesting about this interview was that Seth talked about how he had been bullied into accepting a client in the early days of his career. The experience made him feel…
One of the problems with the secularization of society is that it tends to shrink our communities. We focus on ourselves and our immediate family and friends. But we don’t often look beyond the people close to us. There are a lot of problems with organized religion, but one of the things I like about…
peter gruner 