🧘🏻‍♂️ What a beautiful thing to say to myself. I found that at the end of my meditation, my compassion and love for others had strengthened through offering those to myself. From my Daily Calm.

🧘🏻‍♂️ This summarizes the past few months for me. One constant step of discomfort followed by another, all in the service of regaining my life and being able to be present. From my Daily Calm.

📖 🎧 Wolverine: The Long Night

(Podcast)

🧘🏻‍♂️ This can be a real challenge. Ironically, it feels easiest when I lean in to my thoughts as feelings instead of trying to push them away. From my Daily Calm

There is something so healing about being around new life emerging. Definitely needed today.

❄️ 🥶 I am so ready for the snow to be done…

After coming to grips with the fact that I have a mental illness, I realized that I am part of the secret society of mental health sufferers.

It is sad and ironic that one of the pernicious lies of mental illness is that you are alone and different from everyone else. While there is some truth to being different than most (or maybe just some!) people, you are far from alone. There are so many other people that grapple with the same kinds of issues.

I have been humbled and touched by the response to my post a few weeks ago announcing my own struggles with mental health, Coming out. So many people reached out with kind words and compassion. But even more than that, many people responded by sharing some of their own struggles with mental health.

I think it is fair to say at this point that everyone has been touched by mental health issues, either directly or through a loved one.

At times, I almost wish we wore a special emblem like the Freemasons to be able to easily identify each other. I understand that this is a deeply private part of people’s lives, and many are not willing to share it openly. From my own experience, I have found so much healing in acknowledging my struggle and openly sharing with others. I think we often fear stigma or backlash—I certainly did for a long time myself. But I have been met with compassion and love instead, and I relish the chance to extend that to others.

I want to pause and acknowledge the privilege I enjoy. As a straight white man, I have all of society behind me to fall back on. There are so many people who suffer with mental health struggles that do not have the same resources and privileges. I can only imagine what they go through.

Whether you belong to this secret society of sufferers or not, we all need understanding and compassion. I hope that we can be more comfortable sharing our struggles with each other, and when someone is vulnerable that we respond with validation and encouragement.

🎥 Captain Marvel

👍 Seriously impressive and enjoyable. Definitely one I look forward to watching with my daughters in particular. Probably my favorite movie in a long time.

🧘🏻‍♂️ This can be challenging when it feels like the storm has been raging incessantly. But there is always hope for the future. We can’t know what it will hold. From my Daily Calm

💮 🎧 Just finished season 3 of The Hilarious World of Depression. I hope to write more about my thoughts and feelings on it soon. I am profoundly grateful for such a wonderful resource. It has been a huge help to not feel so alone as I learn to cope with mental illness.

🧘🏻‍♂️ I feel like I catch glimpses of this at times. There is a quiet, still pond that is accessible only through the sometimes strenuous toil of settling. From my Daily Calm

It’s a little surprising how easy it is to blow a huge number of hours playing Legend of Zelda on the Nintendo Switch, especially when the kids are watching. All of a sudden the day is almost gone! At least we’ve spent most of it together. 😛🎮

This felt good today. I thought I would just leave Apple’s marketing text. The award got me out of the house, even in the snow, for a walk (on the track at the gym 😉).

I earned this award inspired by International Women’s Day with my #AppleWatch. #CloseYourRings

🧘🏻‍♂️ What a wonderful day to remember and honor the important women in my life. I am so profoundly grateful. I am conscious that I am not better than, or worse than, the women I know and love. Just different. And together we are more. From my Daily Calm

💮 Started my first real day of exposure and response prevention (ERP) treatment today. Wow. It’s rough. 😖 But it was so powerful and hopeful to feel the change that came to me by the end. It’s going to be a hard road, but there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel.

This never works as a parent. We can’t tell someone to do the action that represents the feeling we want them to develop.

I went out on a walk a few days ago, and overhead a scuffle between a couple small children. One of them started crying, and then the dad noticed. He yelled out, “Tell him sorry right now!” I had to chuckle to myself as I continued walking. I completely understood the dad, and how easy it is to say something so unhelpful and asinine.

Most likely, the dad wanted the offending child to actually be sorry. He wanted the child to learn that what he had done was not acceptable, and to feel remorse. If the child had actually felt remorse, an apology would have naturally followed. As parents, we recognize how silly it is to tell our children, “Feel sorry for what you just did.” It is so much easier to focus on the action rather than the feeling, and so that is where our parenting focuses.

This is similar in many ways to the phenomenon I noticed a few weeks ago, and wrote about in Living with incompetence. We often settle for focusing on what is easier to measure, and leave aside the more important, but more amorphous, root cause.

When we fall into this trap as parents, we teach our children the same behavior. They grow up learning that recognizing and feeling remorse for injuring someone else is not important, but rather the outward expression of those feelings. We don’t need to feel a certain way—we just have to act a certain way, and then we will be acceptable.

A better approach to this kind of situation is to stop any violence and then redirect our children’s attention to more positive actions. We ignore the inappropriate behavior as much as possible, and look for opportunities to reinforce positive behavior. Then later, we can have a discussion with the child when emotions have calmed. We can explain why the behavior was wrong, and the impact it has on other people. We don’t need to teach our children to feel remorse; instead we teach them empathy, and when they injure another, the remorse naturally follows.

In my opinion, one of the biggest problems attacking society, and especially our children, today is a lack of empathy. We have become utterly self-absorbed, and all events and actions are viewed in relation to their impact on us. We have lost the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes and see how our behavior and actions might be affecting them.

We must first master this skill in our own lives. We have to be self-aware enough to get outside of ourselves and care more about other people. As we develop and model this behavior, we become capable of passing it on to others, especially our children. As a result, the world will be a much better place.

🧘🏻‍♂️ This idea leaves me conflicted. It can be soothing to reduce the possibilities. My problem, however, is usually in recognizing alternatives to the first possibility identified. So this practice is vital for me. From my Daily Calm

🧘🏻‍♂️ This feels paradoxically cyclical. If you don’t know how to live, how can you trust yourself? It has to start somewhere. Here’s hoping we can all make the leap of faith. From my Daily Calm

📖 Journey to the Center of the Earth

By Jules Verne

🧘🏻‍♂️ This is a real challenge for me. But as I stop trying to run from the thoughts and just sit with them for a moment, they lose some of their sharp edges. From my Daily Calm

We often attach so many expectations and hopes to recommendations we give others that we deny them the opportunity to simply experience the moment.

I recently returned from a vacation with my brother in Mexico. He was able to live in San Carlos for eight months last year, as his company has an office down there. I tagged along for a business trip of his, and we had a great time relaxing.

While we were there, I noticed an interesting phenomenon in myself. There were a few evenings when we watched a movie together, and they were typically ones that I recommended that he had not yet seen. I found that I had an increased level of anxiety as we watched those movies, and I was worried about whether he would like my recommendations. I wanted them to be just as great for him as they were for me.

Because he had lived there for a while, many of the food options we chose were recommendations from him. He wanted me to try some of his favorite spots. I projected the same kind of anxiety on him for these recommendations. I felt pressure to like the food so that he would not feel bad. I’m sure that he did feel some anxiety, but not to the level that I created in myself.

I realized how common this is. Almost anytime we give someone a recommendation, we get emotionally invested in it. We want so badly for the other person to have the same wonderful experience that we did. Ironically, this heightened desire often makes that enjoyment impossible.

The problem is that introducing additional expectations can be toxic. We take a situation which may be just fine, but by building it up to be amazing it becomes a disappointment. Even in instances when it is not a letdown, the additional stress we have introduced invariably detracts from the enjoyment everyone involved could have had.

We have to remember that there is no success or failure attached to recommendations. When we give a recommendation, we are offering a possibility, not a guarantee. In the best situations, we merely provide the idea for someone to do something. They may choose to do it or not. They may enjoy it or not. They may recommend it further or not.

If we can separate the expectations from the situation and approach the situation with curiosity, we provide a safe place for true enjoyment. The key is for us to allow each other, and even ourselves, to merely experience the moment with no judgment attached.

🧘🏻‍♂️ This is at the core of the kind of father I am striving to become. It’s a long journey of self discovery to figure out what not saying no to myself looks like. But it’s worth it to become the dad I want to be. From my Daily Calm

Thoughts on the spectrum of kindness and compassion we extend in talking to others, talking about others, talking to ourselves, and talking about ourselves.

Links

🌀 Relative Suffering

The Screwtape Letters

🧘🏻‍♂️ This does not feel easy or natural to do. But it is something that I want to make a normal part of my personal and family culture. Through self-care, we can better care for others. From my Daily Calm

🧘🏻‍♂️ We often lament the lightning-quick passage of time, but more rarely use it to our advantage. Small, consistent efforts add up to significant achievements. From my Daily Calm