but if you step back, what you realize is that he was mastering the art of showing up. He was becoming the type of person that went to the gym, even if it was just for five minutes. I think this is a deeper truth about habits that often gets overlooked, which is a habit must be established before it can be improved. You have to make it the standard in your life before you can worry about optimizing or scaling it up from there. For whatever reason, we are so focused on finding the best business idea, the perfect workout program, the ideal diet plan, we are so focused on optimizing that we don't give ourselves permission to show up, even if it's just in a small way. So the... posted on Jan 2 2020 (9,676 reads)

of self-preservation and adaptation. So, if we've been in an environment that's harsh, that's judgmental, that's unloving, that's neglectful, or abusive verbally or physically, we learn to shut down. We protect that native sensitivity and we get on with our life. And so at some point—often it's somewhere in our 30s, or 40s, or later—there is a turning back and there is a seeing, a sensing and a seeing of what's been left behind in terms of unfinished business and a return to these child parts and child experiences in a process of embracing them with love and understanding, and we go to those places that we abandoned. And in so doing, we reverse th... posted on Dec 23 2019 (8,821 reads)

ears. He even had a couple of obscenely overpriced store-bought numbers, decorated with sequins, complete with Velcro fasteners for quick changes. A cape for every occasion, every mood.  UNLIKE THE ADULTS I KNEW, WORN DOWN BY UNIMAGINABLE GROWN-UP PROBLEMS, ZORRO EXUDED SAVVY AND ELEGANT GOODNESS I can still remember tying a bath towel around my neck when I was a little boy in order to play Superman. Somebody drew an “S” on a T-shirt for me, and I was in business. When I wore that cape, I was faster than a speeding bullet, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Later, inspired by the black-and white television series, I became Zorro. Unli... posted on Feb 2 2020 (5,289 reads)

possessed by a productive naïveté that can easily get crushed by reality. We are not the “money people” who add capital to an existing idea. We are the creators taking huge risks at great personal cost. We are often described as naive, idealistic, passionate, or crazy. The social entrepreneur has it even worse: we are fighting the battle of birthing a new venture while at the same time trying to show the world that we can inject a sense of justice into the business itself, rather than merely trying to rack up profit. Growing your own garden is the only way to recover from the devastating reality that most of the world doesn’t give a sh*t about ... posted on Feb 8 2020 (8,287 reads)

I want to let our listeners know that if you’re interested in learning more about the Stay Woke, Give Back Tour, you can check it out at staywokegiveback.org. I want to enact my own mantra here a little bit which has to do with really leading with the energy of my heart. The Sounds True Foundation is a real heart effort here at Sounds True to make sure that there are not barriers to the type of spiritual education that we make available through the for-profit part of our business. But Justin, the part about you and your work that’s so meaningful to me is that it became apparent to me that just lowering the barriers to our existing products, offering scholarsh... posted on Feb 17 2020 (6,500 reads)

hometowns to ride out the storm. Goodbye Italy. It angers me that we have no clear or intelligent leadership or guidance from people who are in a position to make the public do the right thing. So absent that, we need to step in and do our own leading, because we are smarter than our public leadership. Please stop. Stop moving, driving, erranding, traveling, running away, distracting, thrashing around. Please tell your friends, your family, and your colleagues to stop, as business owners, support your staff to stop if they can work from home. And if you are not home, don’t go home. Stay where you are. Like literally. And this means limiting the scope of... posted on Mar 17 2020 (29,868 reads)

Ceremony, and Materiality How are we to understand such stories? The politically correct modern mind wants to respect other cultures, but hesitates to seriously adopt the radically different view of causality they hold. The ceremonies I speak of are in a different category from what the modern mind considers to be practical action in the world. Thus, a climate conference might begin by inviting an indigenous person to invoke the four directions, before moving on to the serious business of metrics, models, and policy. In this essay I will explore another view of what modern people can draw from the ceremonial approach to life, as practiced by what Orland Bishop calls &ldq... posted on Apr 25 2020 (8,459 reads)

– with the idea that one is praying for a vision or dream.  I discovered then that sitting still and not moving when alone in nature – and especially without food – changes my relationship to animals in a wonderful way. Usually, animals just want to know if you have food or are looking to harm them, and when they ascertain neither is the case, you become to them just a big animal who happens to have made a nest in the middle of their world and they just go about their business. I love that. I love sitting in stillness as animals move around me.  So after that vision quest, I stopped hiking during my own solo camping retreats in nature – just to a... posted on Apr 13 2020 (7,050 reads)

returned to full production. People, most of them still masked, go here and there in this industrial city of 11 million, steadily resuming their normal, pre-pandemic lives. We are happy for them, but — at the same time — this is not the “normal” we want. As was seen recently on a wall in Chile: “We Won’t Go Back to Normal, Because Normal Was the Problem.” Joe Biden himself has just said, “When we come out of this, we can’t just go back to business as usual.” We have to fix what is “deeply broken” in our country. A new society can be developed from the inspiring ways people around the world are responding to this un... posted on May 7 2020 (7,916 reads)

in a way that made people feel like they had to take care of me. I knew that if I wasn't safe within myself with my own depression, I wasn't ready to go public with it. I needed to be able to look at myself and say, in public, “I am all of the above. I am my gifts and my strengths and my light. I am also my weaknesses and my liabilities. I am my darkness and I'm not ashamed of an ounce of it. What you see is what you get.” Until I got to that point, I had no business writing or teaching about something as profound and life-threatening as clinical depression. I am all of the above. I am my gifts and my strengths and my light. I am also my weaknesse... posted on Jun 9 2020 (7,758 reads)

many ways in which we’re alienated from each other. And that’s one of the things we lose, that kind of productive conversation that can move a person’s thinking forward and can expand a person’s — not just their acceptable vocabulary, but also their real understanding. Tippett:Their understanding and their presence in the world, their ability to move forward. Another very striking thing about this moment we inhabit is, we’re aware of all this unfinished business, these things we actually thought we’d made so much progress on, but also seeing full circle that the legacy of whiteness is now costing white people: the foreclosure crisis or opiate a... posted on Jun 16 2020 (7,759 reads)

tend to be the most challenging arena for spiritually-oriented people. We may be fine reading our spiritual books and being on retreat but what happens when we deal with a friend, partner, or family member with whom we are in conflict? Inner peace can fly out the window in the blink of an eye followed by days of inner turmoil. As a result, we may want to avoid the messy business of relationships and hole up in a monastery for awhile. We can approach human relationships as a catalyst rather than an obstacle to spiritual growth. Relationships are where the rubber hits the road, where residues of the separate-inside-self, large or small, get exposed and worked through. It is th... posted on Jul 4 2020 (6,421 reads)

Then we’d get out, walk down the hall, and knock on their door. When Grandma Minnie let us in, we could smell the food in the kitchen. Their living room had high bookshelves filled with books of all sizes and colors, hundreds of them. Grandpa Max never had any formal schooling beyond age 12 in the old country. At age 15 he was able to get a steamship ticket and traveled alone to America, not speaking a word of English, seeking a better life. By age 20 he was running his own successful business, a dress factory. He was able to bring his parents, and all of his brothers except the oldest, who wanted to stay in Europe, to America. Whenever he wasn’t working, Grandpa Max loved to... posted on Jul 13 2020 (6,492 reads)

a child, Venkat grew up in a middle class family in Bombay and got an opportunity to study in an ordinary school. Seeing some of his childhood friends like Manohar and Harry drop-out due to the vicious cycle of poverty, Venkat realized “just where you are born makes all the difference in your life”. His whole life ever since has been a sincere, untiring attempt to be an instrument for a more equal world.  Studying at IIM Ahmedabad, India’s best business school, at a young age of 21 when his friends dreamt of a fancy career, Venkat was busy writing in his college assignment “I see myself as an instrument or tool that is available to society. And my choices s... posted on Jul 28 2020 (5,448 reads)

opening the lens of our awareness, this truth becomes clear, and we can no longer rationalize the irrational, or deny the undeniable. It is upon us now. I realize that warnings of “collapse,” “end times,” “apocalypse,” and the “end of civilization” are often viewed as fringe, “doomer” or alarmist, but I also believe that on some level, we are all feeling it. To the naked eye, things may still look relatively “normal” as business-as-usual plods along, but lurking below the surface, many of us know something very different. The Greek definition of apocalypse is “revelation,” or “a lifting of the ve... posted on Aug 25 2020 (8,286 reads)

displays of generosity”. Or perhaps as David Remnick comments “Philanthropy isn’t only fascinating in itself; it’s also a window into the structure of the contemporary world”. There is little trust in ‘the man of wealth considering himself the mere trustee and agent for his poor brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience and ability to administer’. This criticism of philanthropy covering for the excesses of business is rather more widespread today than before. In a sense, the pursuit of profit alone, or the doctrine of shareholder primacy at the expense of other stakeholders is under attack; and has been... posted on Oct 9 2020 (4,799 reads)

suffering? What deepens it, for ourselves and for others? Certain forces, certain actions, certain habits of mind. And what leads us to the end of suffering? The sense of connection, instead of isolation, or clarity instead of confusion. And that’s how it’s all looked at. So it’s not like you get mean to yourself, [laughs] or rejecting, when you see one of these forces. So I just love the image, and right away, I could see myself happily sitting at home, minding my own business, and hear a knock at the door. So I get up, and I open it up, and there’s fear. There’s shame. There’s jealousy. And I either fling open the door and say, “Welcome hom... posted on Oct 24 2020 (7,669 reads)

sorry but I don't want to be an Emperor.  That's not my business.  I don't want to rule or conquer anyone.   I should like to help everyone if possible. We all want to help one another -- human beings are like that.  We all want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful.  But we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. ... posted on Nov 3 2020 (9,664 reads)

a professional grantmaker and manager with some of the world's leading foundations, David Bonbright sought innovative approaches to strengthening citizen self-organization in place of prevailing bureaucratic, top-down models. While with the Ford Foundation, David was declared persona non grata by the apartheid government in South Africa for helping fund the liberation struggle. In 1990, in the final years of that struggle, he entrepreneured the development of some key building block organizations for civil society in the new South Africa. He then founded and now runs an international nonprofit dedicated to bringing constituent feedback to social change practice. He had an unexpected i... posted on Dec 8 2020 (3,771 reads)

the journey work of the stars,” the young Walt Whitman sang in one of the finest poems from his Song of Myself — the aria of a self that seemed to him then, as it always seems to the young, infinite and invincible. But when a paralytic stroke felled him decades later, unpeeling his creaturely limits and his temporality, he leaned on the selfsame reverence of nature as he considered what makes life worth living: After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains? Nature remains; to bring out from their torpid recess... posted on Nov 30 2020 (5,521 reads)