Friday Sabbatical
Whatever you’re doing this Friday, wherever you’re going or whatever box you’re checking, I invite you to take a moment, just now, and stop doing it at all. Here are five things that stuck with me this week: 1. As Laura and I...
DWYSYWD (Or: How being unreasonable with my word changed my life)
After drinking and partying my way through college, I took a job waiting tables at Damon’s Grill my first job out of college. The same restaurant for which I’d stood at the host stand in high school. Three and a half years, fifty...
Friday Sabbatical
Whatever this Friday brings you, whatever you’re spending your time on these days, I invite you to take a breath, and for a moment to not do that at all. Here are five things that stuck with me this week: 1. Please please please sign up for...
Ryan Vaughn: 100 Ideas Demo Day talk
100 Ideas is an awesome platform created by Startgarden to launch early stage businesses. In it they seed 100 different fledgling businesses with $1k, add water and sunshine, wait a tick, and then invest $20k in the ten that show the most...
Friday Sabbatical
For today’s Sabbatical, I hope you’ll join me in taking a moment to breathe. Try to maintain focus on your breath as you let David Whyte’s poem in to sit with you: Here are five things that stuck with me this week: 1. MiBiz...
Insight Meditation-as-goggles, for the water we’re all swimming in
One of my favorite overviews of why insight practice is helpful is given by David Foster Wallace, called This Is Water. It was a commencement address, delivered at a Significant Occassion. If you haven’t seen it yet, please watch it now...
Uncovering white fragility is uncomfortable, and that’s ok. We white people can handle it.
“You are under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago.” Alan Watts I’ve been watching white people all over the internet wrestle with their fragility. Our fragility. It’s hard. I see tweets and...
How to create something meaningful
It starts with a dream. And with the first whisps of the dream, the machine locks in and the outcome is set. You create details, the most minute details, which bring the dream to life. It becomes real. Only for you at first, but the minute...
Friday Sabbatical
The present situation of the world seems pedagogical to me. Like we’re being taught something, if only we’ll sufficiently quiet ourselves to listen. The lesson, I imagine, is unique to each of us. But the opportunity to learn it is...
Being racist hurts, and what NOT to do about it
This whole process of confronting my own racism has been interesting, to say the least. Like when you buy a car because it’s unique but the moment you drive it down the street you see the same car everywhere, now that I’m aware that I...
Friday Sabbatical
The world is changing, and there is work to be done. Now more than ever. But things won’t change overnight, so whatever you’re doing this Friday, I invite you to pause. Look at your mind. Notice what you’re telling yourself, without...
Discussion on business, kabuki, meditation & life with SURGE
One of my favorite people in Grand Rapids is Amanda Chocko. I met Amanda when I was first starting VNN, way back in 2010, so she’s watched an awful lot of growing up on my part (mentally and emotionally; I’ve been...