I have the opportunity to work within our local prison system and was spending a bit of time thinking about some of the opening conversations I would have with these men. The reason for my involvement is to help create a powerful new paradigm for them so that long before the gates on the prison opened and they walked out, these men were already free.

What struck me powerfully is that as an inmate of a prison, your loss of freedom is tangible, but for us that have "freedom," our prison is not so obvious. As an inmate, you can see the guards, the gates and the barbed wire. You see the other inmates dressed like you, showing no vulnerability like you, using the same language as you, all following the rules of the prison society with little or no choice in things being any different. Every day you are reminded of your crimes, every day is filled with guilt, loss of freedom, loss of choice, and in order to function we push those feelings down so all we are left with is anger, resentment...

I’ve been listening to a series of lectures over the past few months around culture, ideology and fairness or equality. As you can well imagine, there is no end to the opinions to the debate on what this all means, but what is more interesting is the foundational reason why we take our various views on the world.

One of the challenges that we have in social media, which has become a massive problem, is that social media only feeds what you are interested in, which is fine when we are talking about shoes and travel, but not so good when it comes to matters of politics and religion, and everything that may come underneath those headings.

What allows us to formulate an objective point of view is when we clearly understand our stance and the viewpoint of another, but we also understand the reason why they and we feel that way (assuming we and they have worked that part out before we and they professed our opinions). But social media doesn’t present both sides of the...

In the past three to four years I have found myself looking into the dark recesses of my mind searching for the hidden drivers of my behavior that may help explain some of the challenges I face in my life. What I mean by hidden drivers are events in my life that I have experienced that made a lasting impact, for better or worse. In a program called “Landmark Forum” there was made mention that our lives are shaped by three “significant” events, events that give us our belief surrounding god, love, trust, and connection. There can be many offshoots the primary three, but when we dig I believe we will find there are some foundation events that set us on our path in life for better or worse. Trust for me is a big one as it has a direct relationship to love, connect and god.

If I cannot trust my environment, I cannot connect easily with those in that environment, and if there is no connection there can be no love, and if there is no love, there is no god. (only in...

This quote has been around for sometime now and it has such a pleasant sound to it, an attitude of gratitude. A speaker I was listening to recently said something interesting that I wanted to share. What they said was that gratitude is not attained through simply having an attitude around it but rather it is an action, a decision we must make consciously on a daily basis to step into that place. The concept of having an “attitude of gratitude” would lead one to believe that it is possible to go through life minute by minute looking at life through a gratitude lens. The reality is that we drift in and out of consciousness, meaning that much of life is done on autopilot, and we are not truly present to most things we do repetitiously. This simply due to the fact that once we develop a pattern of doing anything the novelty of it wears off and we require less presence to attend to the same task that previously we had to focus on and give our full attention. This is when we...

As I wrote about yesterday, life is about not only contribution but also allowing ourselves to have the things we want. One of the things I am interested in doing more is “laughing”. My life growing up was about duty, work ethic, and angry people, so easy laughter did not ring out in our family home too often. I used alcohol to “lighten up” and it seemed to work at the time. I was funny (or so I thought) I found it easier to talk to others, striking up easy conversation, and the whole social process just seemed smoother if I was in an altered state. But what happens when you remove the “special sauce” and you have to actually “talk to people” relate to people? Not much actually, conversations become sparse, you look like a piece of awkward driftwood in the corner. In my business, or in arenas where I could lead the conversation, presenting etc, I was gold, but put me into a house with a bunch of people I don’t know, and I got...

Your vision becomes clear when you look inside your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.'

I love this quote by Carl Jung as it has such meaning to me. Quite often we will silence the call of our heart in fear of the rejection and pain that may be experienced when opening our heart to the possibilities that the universe may bestow on us. Over the years I have sought the key in unlocking the possibilities that I knew lay inside of me, however the song in my heart was only an echo I seemed to chase, taunting me endlessly. After thousands of books, courses and deep introspection I came up with “nothing”. All the words and all the meanings given to those words, phrases and lovely sentiments fell short of their promise to deliver me from my imprisonment, it was as if I was peering through a window at all the possibilities that life had to offer but was not allowed to touch. What I have come to realize that, though I am sure I had heard it before, was...

I had the pleasure of being connected to an amazing group of people for eight days in Kelowna, BC, and it during this time I got to peek under the covers of the real meaning of connection. In this world where catch phrases are common place, such as integrity, connection, authenticity, leadership, and the like, I find that the meaning of these words can be lost on us. Simon Sinek in his book, “Start with Why” reminded us if we were not truly connected to the meaning of our message, or our words, despite being able to artfully craft a positive message, the real impact will be lost on the world. I really got the meaning of his message as in certain circumstances if I am invited to share something deep and meaningful, the environment I am in will determine if I will or not.

What I am referring to is the energy or underlying emotion that is connected to the request is warm and welcoming then I would feel compelled to share openly and honestly, but with the same request in an...

I had just finished re-reading a book called “The Noticer” that was given to me by a friend a few years ago. It was a heart-warming story about a man named “Jones”, who seemed to show up in people’s lives when they needed some “perspective” on how to get past a current personal obstacle they were struggling with. One thing that stood out for me was the concept of getting a new perspective had a lot to do with asking better questions regarding their current circumstances. Quite often, unfortunately, the questions we ask ourselves about our current struggles do more to mire us deeper and deeper rather than offer solutions.

I recall one of the most powerful changes in “perspective” came to me from reading the seminal book titled “Power versus Force” written by Dr. David Hawkins. In the opening chapters, he stated two things which will forever change the way I think about the way I think. The first point that he made was...