After burning through 15 or so spiritual books over the last couple of years with the fervor that only the undead can muster, I can report a very prominent common denominator: The concept of forgiving yourself. From The Buddha, to Jesus, to Allah, to ancient Toltec wisemen—the concept of forgiveness comes up again and again.  Forgive yourself. What do those words mean to you?

February is American Heart Month, and since I ignored many signs that my heart was in trouble, Lennart and I thought it would be a good idea to offer a practical guide of signs you should never ignore.

In my experience, the glow of surviving something like that dims after a while, despite how hard you try to hold on to it. Then what creeps in is a lot of fear. I realize now that while most people can push away thoughts of death, and get used to the idea of dying one day as they (hopefully) grow very old–I had to instantly face that at 53 years old.

If you focus on building upon your capabilities, you’ll have an easier time traversing your path, and you’ll also have a bigger impact on your surroundings.   

We’ve been talking a lot about goal setting and reaching these goals lately. Executing “the plan” can be a daunting task… Where do you start? Well, let’s start from the start—your morning routine. Scott recently posted his morning routine on Instagram—making the point that nothing has changed for him—if it isn't broken don't fix it

So, in that spirit, we thought that we would look a bit into the morning routine. 

This is a subject which we have discussed a bit lately. Crab mentality is a metaphor for what in philosophical terms is called Schadenfreude or feeling pleasure in seeing other people fail. When a group of crabs are trapped in a bucket, they will actively pull the crabs that are trying to escape back down again.

This time of year has always been hard, but now we have all of this extra uncertainty on top of it. So, what should you do? Well, we will try to make this matter as “easy” as possible. 

Another year has gone by, and it’s time to evaluate the year that has passed and set some new goals for the year to come.

It’s time for the holidays. Time for family and time for a never-ending supply of delicious food—so here is the question—can you enjoy the holidays without gaining weight? Well, in the Christmas spirit we’ll give you two options. 

“Amateurs despise anything less than 100% effort. In contrast, elite athletes know that a Tuesday at the gym is not equal to The Olympics—and ration their efforts accordingly.”

They’re quirky—sometimes downright creepy—but does this group of (mostly) old white guys do more for the human race than the world’s political leaders? Is it possible they could save us all?

What can the average person do to impact climate change? Looking to world leaders and news media for answers has left many (us included) confused.

“Does anybody really know where we are going?” Surely someone has taken a wrong turn. “Can we please ask somebody?” The mood in the car is getting grim…

It seems like more and more people are buying massage guns these days. Notice how we said “buying,” not using? Like many items we humans buy, they seem to get used for a couple of weeks, and then set aside--probably after a certain ache or pain has subsided a bit.

This is not an “old guys start rocking again” post.

But, it’s kind of like that. It happens a lot—you find something that works for you—and you just let it slip away. Bands have been like that for us.

None of us will escape all the ravages of time. There are some very specific things that happen to our bodies as we age. But we can fight many of them, by reverse engineering our training to help us do the things we still want to do for ourselves when we’re older.

Our bodies are trying to tell us something. The body is trying to tell us to put on the brakes, take a time out, relax, and restore our energy reserves.

Often people have the same goal for years and even decades—"I want to lose weight, get fit, get a promotion, etc.”—you get the point. We need goals and we need habits, but we think goals and habits have more in common than we give them credit for. They’re not different things, but more like opposite sides of a spectrum—where one influences and improves the other. 

It would be great if we could fire on all cylinders all the time. Many of us may even subconsciously expect it of ourselves—pressuring ourselves to get through a designed training program, as well as other commitments throughout each day. We think this is a recipe for physical and mental breakdown.

We stand on the shoulders of generations of people who were smarter than most of us, and if we respect and listen to the aggregated wisdom, then our lives become better, more productive, and more enjoyable in general.