I wrote recently about the challenge of turning plans into routines.  One of the activities that is the most impactful for me is meditation.  I cannot say that I have a perfect meditation routine, but I can absolutely say that when I do do it, it makes me feel great, immediately.

There are a bunch of good tools out there to help build a meditation routine.  I have found that guided meditations are the easiest to start with, since they give you a framework and something to react to, but can also be hit-or-miss in terms of fit.

The very first guided meditation that really worked for me was this 6-minute body scan, by my friend Paul Fulton.  If you have never meditated and are looking for an easy way to feel it out, this is a great one to start with.

I have also used a bunch of apps to help build the habit.  Insight Timer has both a library of guided meditations as well as a very nice tool for building your own meditation timer (complete with punctuating wood blocks, bells, etc).  My current go-to is Simple Habit, which has very nicely curated sets of meditations.  All the apps in this space try to help you out by visualizing your "streak", which if I'm honest only kind of works for me.

In terms of building my own routine, what I struggle with the most is finding the right time.  If I can manage to do it first thing in the morning, that's what works the best, in terms of teeing up a good mindset on the day.  But I have also found that tucking it in in spare moments (especially with guided meditations under 10 minutes long) also works -- for me, often times on trains and planes.

Meditation, like aerobic exercise, is magical in that it is both mental and physical.  I walk away feeling calmer, clearer, more focused, and more energized.  It is incredible, really.  So I am a bit surprised and a bit bummed that I have not yet managed to make it a bedrock of my every day.  Working on it.

Just about two years ago, my wife's parents were hit by a truck while crossing the street.

The past two years have been both difficult and wonderful.  Wonderful in that two people who were on the brink of death following the accident are still with us (her mother in particular has had a miraculous if incomplete recovery from a shockingly awful head injury) - and also wonderful in that the experience brought us closer in some ways.  Difficult in that not only was the recovery an overwhelming ordeal, but the life that we / they are left with now is fundamentally different, an in some ways, permanently broken.

Life happens slowly and quickly. It continues to amaze me how change both accretes imperceptibly over time, and also comes crashing through in instant bursts.  In this case, that one moment, at around 7pm on Sept 29th, 2016, was an inflection point for the family.  I think we all still have some amount of PTSD at this time of year, when it gets colder and dusk comes earlier, and every dark crosswalk feels like a danger zone.

I was talking to a friend this week whose family suffered an even more awful trauma several years back -- a trauma which shook the family and altered the course of their existence and their relationships.  In that case as well, the longer-term outcome both horribly bad, but with some silver linings.

Every person, family and community has small and large versions of life-altering trauma.  Bullying, sexual assaults, suicides, natural disasters, accidents of all kinds, gang violence, political violence.

Sunday night over dinner, my son, parents and I were discussing the saving / investing system we set up for our kids in the spring. The idea was/is: set a monthly budget for purchases (in their case, mostly online movies, tv shows and games), and include a really healthy interest rate (20% monthly) to encourage savings. What a great idea! I got lots of really nice feedback on the post back in March.

My son described the system to my parents, but instead of describing the concept, as I just did, he described the reality: we set the budget, did it for a few months, and then basically forgot about it. So, rather than teach my kids a valuable lesson about saving and investing, I thought them how weak my own follow-through can be. Ouch.

It reminds me of a psychology study that found that announcing a plan is, in fact, detrimental to seeing the plan through — because, you get a nice dose of good feeling by announcing the plan, so much so that you lose the motivation to actually do it. This is, of course, problematic, and to be avoided.

If I’m honest, I can think of plenty of times where this has happened to me. I’ll refrain from listing them all out here, but trust me, there are more than a few examples. Looking back, the times I have been the most successful at seeing something hard and long-term all the way through are the times when I have just done it and not said anything about it.

I wrote recently about the challenge of turning plans into routines.  One of the activities that is the most impactful for me is meditation.  I cannot say that I have a perfect meditation routine, but I can absolutely say that when I do do it, it makes me feel great, immediately.

There are a bunch of good tools out there to help build a meditation routine.  I have found that guided meditations are the easiest to start with, since they give you a framework and something to react to, but can also be hit-or-miss in terms of fit.

The very first guided meditation that really worked for me was this 6-minute body scan, by my friend Paul Fulton.  If you have never meditated and are looking for an easy way to feel it out, this is a great one to start with.

I have also used a bunch of apps to help build the habit.  Insight Timer has both a library of guided meditations as well as a very nice tool for building your own meditation timer (complete with punctuating wood blocks, bells, etc).  My current go-to is Simple Habit, which has very nicely curated sets of meditations.  All the apps in this space try to help you out by visualizing your "streak", which if I'm honest only kind of works for me.

In terms of building my own routine, what I struggle with the most is finding the right time.  If I can manage to do it first thing in the morning, that's what works the best, in terms of teeing up a good mindset on the day.  But I have also found that tucking it in in spare moments (especially with guided meditations under 10 minutes long) also works -- for me, often times on trains and planes.

Meditation, like aerobic exercise, is magical in that it is both mental and physical.  I walk away feeling calmer, clearer, more focused, and more energized.  It is incredible, really.  So I am a bit surprised and a bit bummed that I have not yet managed to make it a bedrock of my every day.  Working on it.

Just about two years ago, my wife's parents were hit by a truck while crossing the street.

The past two years have been both difficult and wonderful.  Wonderful in that two people who were on the brink of death following the accident are still with us (her mother in particular has had a miraculous if incomplete recovery from a shockingly awful head injury) - and also wonderful in that the experience brought us closer in some ways.  Difficult in that not only was the recovery an overwhelming ordeal, but the life that we / they are left with now is fundamentally different, an in some ways, permanently broken.

Life happens slowly and quickly. It continues to amaze me how change both accretes imperceptibly over time, and also comes crashing through in instant bursts.  In this case, that one moment, at around 7pm on Sept 29th, 2016, was an inflection point for the family.  I think we all still have some amount of PTSD at this time of year, when it gets colder and dusk comes earlier, and every dark crosswalk feels like a danger zone.

I was talking to a friend this week whose family suffered an even more awful trauma several years back -- a trauma which shook the family and altered the course of their existence and their relationships.  In that case as well, the longer-term outcome both horribly bad, but with some silver linings.

Every person, family and community has small and large versions of life-altering trauma.  Bullying, sexual assaults, suicides, natural disasters, accidents of all kinds, gang violence, political violence.

Sunday night over dinner, my son, parents and I were discussing the saving / investing system we set up for our kids in the spring. The idea was/is: set a monthly budget for purchases (in their case, mostly online movies, tv shows and games), and include a really healthy interest rate (20% monthly) to encourage savings. What a great idea! I got lots of really nice feedback on the post back in March.

My son described the system to my parents, but instead of describing the concept, as I just did, he described the reality: we set the budget, did it for a few months, and then basically forgot about it. So, rather than teach my kids a valuable lesson about saving and investing, I thought them how weak my own follow-through can be. Ouch.

It reminds me of a psychology study that found that announcing a plan is, in fact, detrimental to seeing the plan through — because, you get a nice dose of good feeling by announcing the plan, so much so that you lose the motivation to actually do it. This is, of course, problematic, and to be avoided.

If I’m honest, I can think of plenty of times where this has happened to me. I’ll refrain from listing them all out here, but trust me, there are more than a few examples. Looking back, the times I have been the most successful at seeing something hard and long-term all the way through are the times when I have just done it and not said anything about it.