Travis Hellstrom's Blog, page 8

How You Know You’ve Been in Grad School Too Long

As I was graduating one of my favorite professors took me aside and told me a story,

Realizing you’re finally done can take a while. When I was walking across the stage on my commencement day I remember shaking the hand of my doctoral advisor and only thinking one thing: I know she is going to ask me to redo the 15 pages of references in my dissertation.

She didn’t of course and it was ridiculous for me to think that, but anyway, that’s how immersed we can get.

I love that story.

It’s been almost a week since I graduated and I have definitely felt my mind opening up and relaxing quite a bit in the past few days.

But last night I had a dream and it reminded me that I may have a little ways more to go.

Polar Bear Diagrams

In the dream I’m sitting down with one of my campus advisors and she says, “We need to talk about your paper.” The yellow cover of Leading Happiness is sitting on her desk and she opens it up.

I am filled with dread and confusion. I thought I was done days ago.

Inside I see diagrams and photos I never put in the paper. On several pages there are drawings of polar bears sleeping, eating and doing other fun things that polar bears do. “I wanted to tell you that I loved the improvements to the paper,” she says, “they make it much easier and more fun to read!”

I agree and take the paper to look through it. It’s littered with nonsensical diagrams and in the back section there are a few pages with coupons for combos at McDonald’s.

I hand it back to her, “I think my paper has been hacked.” I say something along those lines, not sure if plagarism includes adding coupons and polar bear diagrams to someone else’s thesis.

I sigh and realize I’m going to have to follow up on this and figure out who has done me the favor of making my paper “easier and more fun to read.”

As I woke up this morning dread turned to relief.

Pending surprise polar bears, my paper is just fine.

What’s Next

Several people have asked me, “What’s next?”

That’s a great question.

I’ll have a detailed answer for you on Friday, but for now the answer is… sleep.

Obviously I still need a little bit more.

Masters Graduation

I am very excited to announce that I am a proud Masters of Arts graduate of SIT Graduate Institute!

My thesis presentation on Leading Happiness went really well, thank you everyone for coming out to be there with me! It’s been wonderful to sit back and relax now that everything is finished.

If you’d like to read my thesis Leading Happiness you can download it for free as a PDF here and at sit.edu.

You also can find it in paperback form here on Amazon.com.

 

 

The Presentation

I was also able to record my thesis presentation as well.

If you’d like to watch it, please click the photo below!

 

Thank you everyone for your wonderful support.

Now I’m going to relax for a little while and next week I’m excited to update you on more exciting things to come!

Interview for Questions for the Dalai Lama

Super fun interview with Hatherleigh Press last week!

Check it out if you want to hear Dede and I talk about the genesis of Questions for the Dalai Lama, some of our favorite quotes and excerpts and why we loved writing the book.

Thanks Hatherleigh!

My Masters Thesis

I’m back on campus at SIT Graduate Institute for my very last week!

I’ve been in class all day preparing for our final presentations. During this week everyone will share their masters thesis. It’s an exciting time!

I’ll be presenting on Tuesday afternoon at 2:00PM and I hope to share some highlights here on my website too.

If you happen to be around Brattleboro, Vermont email me and come jump into the presentation, I’d love to have you join us.

I promise it will be fun and exciting.

If you’d like to read it (or be totally crazy and buy it), please be my guest.

More to come soon!

Bill Watterson’s Speech

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE REAL WORLD BY ONE WHO GLIMPSED IT AND FLED

by Bill Watterson

Kenyon College Commencement

May 20,1990

I have a recurring dream about Kenyon. In it, I’m walking to the postoffice on the way to my first class at the start of the school year. Suddenly it occurs to me that I don’t have my schedule memorized, andI’m not sure which classes I’m taking, or where exactly I’m supposed to be going.

As I walk up the steps to the post office, I realize I don’t have my box key, and in fact, I can’t remember what my box number is. I’m certain that everyone I know has written me a letter, but I can’t get them. I get more flustered and annoyed by the minute. I head back to MiddlePath, racking my brains and asking myself, “How many more years until I graduate? …Wait, didn’t I graduate already?? How old AMI?” Then I wake up.

Experience is food for the brain. And four years at Kenyon is a rich meal. I suppose it should be no surprise that your brains will probably burp up Kenyon for a long time. And I think the reason I keep having the dream is because its central image is a metaphor for a good part of life: that is, not knowing where you’re going or what you’re doing.

I graduated exactly ten years ago. That doesn’t give me a great deal of experience to speak from, but I’m emboldened by the fact that I can’t remember a bit of MY commencement, and I trust that in half an hour, you won’t remember of yours either.

In the middle of my sophomore year at Kenyon, I decided to paint a copy of Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” from the Sistine Chapel on the ceiling of my dorm room. By standing on a chair, I could reach the ceiling, and I taped off a section, made a grid, and started to copy the picture from my art history book.

Working with your arm over your head is hard work, so a few of my more ingenious friends rigged up a scaffold for me by stacking two chairs on my bed, and laying the table from the hall lounge across the chairs andover to the top of my closet. By climbing up onto my bed and up the chairs, I could hoist myself onto the table, and lie in relative comfort two feet under my painting. My roommate would then hand up my paints,and I could work for several hours at a stretch.

The picture took me months to do, and in fact, I didn’t finish the work until very near the end of the school year. I wasn’t much of a painter then, but what the work lacked in color sense and technical flourish, it gained in the incongruity of having a High Renaissance masterpiece in a college dorm that had the unmistakable odor of old beer cans and older laundry.

The painting lent an air of cosmic grandeur to my room, and it seemed to put life into a larger perspective. Those boring, floweryEnglish poets didn’t seem quite so important, when right above my head God was transmitting the spark of life to man.

My friends and I liked the finished painting so much in fact, that we decided I should ask permission to do it. As you might expect, the housing director was curious to know why I wanted to paint this elaborate picture on my ceiling a few weeks before school let out. Well, you don’t get to be a sophomore at Kenyon without learning how to fabricate ideas you never had, but I guess it was obvious that my idea was being proposed retroactively. It ended up that I was allowed to paint the picture, so long as I painted over it and returned the ceiling to normal at the end of the year. And that’s what I did.

Despite the futility of the whole episode, my fondest memories of college are times like these, where things were done out of some inexplicable inner imperative, rather than because the work was demanded. Clearly, I never spent as much time or work on any authorized art project, or any poli sci paper, as I spent on this one act of vandalism.

It’s surprising how hard we’ll work when the work is done just for ourselves. And with all due respect to John Stuart Mill, maybe utilitarianism is overrated. If I’ve learned one thing from being a cartoonist, it’s how important playing is to creativity and happiness.My job is essentially to come up with 365 ideas a year.

If you ever want to find out just how uninteresting you really are, get a job where the quality and frequency of your thoughts determine your livelihood. I’ve found that the only way I can keep writing every day, year after year, is to let my mind wander into new territories. To do that, I’ve had to cultivate a kind of mental playfulness.

We’re not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery – it recharges by running.

You may be surprised to find how quickly daily routine and the demands of “just getting by: absorb your waking hours. You may be surprised matters of habit rather than thought and inquiry. You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your life in terms of other people’s expectations rather than issues. You may be surprised to find out how quickly reading a good book sounds like a luxury.

At school, new ideas are thrust at you every day. Out in the world,you’ll have to find the inner motivation to search for new ideas on your own. With any luck at all, you’ll never need to take an idea and squeeze a punchline out of it, but as bright, creative people, you’ll be called upon to generate ideas and solutions all your lives. Letting your mind play is the best way to solve problems.

For me, it’s been liberating to put myself in the mind of a fictitious six year-old each day, and rediscover my own curiosity. I’ve been amazed at how one ideas leads to others if I allow my mind to play and wander.I know a lot about dinosaurs now, and the information has helped me out of quite a few deadlines.

A playful mind is inquisitive, and learning is fun. If you indulge your natural curiosity and retain a sense of fun in new experience, I think you’ll find it functions as a sort of shock absorber for the bumpy road ahead.

So, what’s it like in the real world? Well, the food is better, but beyond that, I don’t recommend it.

I don’t look back on my first few years out of school with much affection, and if I could have talked to you six months ago, I’d have encouraged you all to flunk some classes and postpone this moment as long as possible. But now it’s too late.

Unfortunately, that was all the advice I really had. When I was sitting where you are, I was one of the lucky few who had a cushy job waiting for me. I’d drawn political cartoons for the Collegian for four years, and the Cincinnati Post had hired me as an editorial cartoonist. All my friends were either dreading the infamous first year of law school, or despondent about their chances of convincing anyone that a history degree had any real application outside of academia.

Boy, was I smug.

As it turned out, my editor instantly regretted his decision to hire me.By the end of the summer, I’d been given notice; by the beginning of winter, I was in an unemployment line; and by the end of my first year away from Kenyon, I was broke and living with my parents again. You can imagine how upset my dad was when he learned that Kenyon doesn’t give refunds.

Watching my career explode on the launch pad caused some soul searching. I eventually admitted that I didn’t have what it takes to be a good political cartoonist, that is, an interest in politics, and I returned to my firs love, comic strips.

For years I got nothing but rejection letters, and I was forced to accept a real job.

A REAL job is a job you hate. I designed car ads and grocery ads in the windowless basement of a convenience store, and I hated every single minute of the 4-1/2 million minutes I worked there. My fellow prisoners at work were basically concerned about how to punch the time clock at the perfect second where they would earn another 20 cents without doing any work for it.

It was incredible: after every break, the entire staff would stand around in the garage where the time clock was, and wait for that last click. And after my used car needed the head gasket replaced twice, I waited in the garage too.

It’s funny how at Kenyon, you take for granted that the people around you think about more than the last episode of Dynasty. I guess that’s what it means to be in an ivory tower.

Anyway, after a few months at this job, I was starved for some life of the mind that, during my lunch break, I used to read those poli sci books that I’d somehow never quite finished when I was here. Some of those books were actually kind of interesting. It was a rude shock to see just how empty and robotic life can be when you don’t care about what you’re doing, and the only reason you’re there is to pay the bills.

Thoreau said, “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

That’s one of those dumb cocktail quotations that will strike fear in your heart as you get older. Actually, I was leading a life of loud desperation.

When it seemed I would be writing about “Midnight Madness Sale-abrations” for the rest of my life, a friend used to console me that cream always rises to the top. I used to think, so do people who throw themselves into the sea.

I tell you all this because it’s worth recognizing that there is no such thing as an overnight success. You will do well to cultivate the resources in yourself that bring you happiness outside of success or failure. The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive. At that time, we turn around and say, yes, this is obviously where I was going all along. It’s a good idea to try to enjoy the scenery on the detours, because you’ll probably take a few.

I still haven’t drawn the strip as long as it took me to get the job. To endure five years of rejection to get a job requires either a faith in oneself that borders on delusion, or a love of the work. I loved the work.

Drawing comic strips for five years without pay drove home the point that the fun of cartooning wasn’t in the money; it was in the work. This turned out to be an important realization when my break finally came.

Like many people, I found that what I was chasing wasn’t what I caught.I’ve wanted to be a cartoonist since I was old enough to read cartoons,and I never really thought about cartoons as being a business. It never occurred to me that a comic strip I created would be at the mercy of a bloodsucking corporate parasite called a syndicate, and that I’d be faced with countless ethical decisions masquerading as simple business decisions.

To make a business decision, you don’t need much philosophy; all you need is greed, and maybe a little knowledge of how the game works.

As my comic strip became popular, the pressure to capitalize on that popularity increased to the point where I was spending almost as much time screaming at executives as drawing. Cartoon merchandising is a $12billion dollar a year industry and the syndicate understandably wanted apiece of that pie. But the more I though about what they wanted to do with my creation, the more inconsistent it seemed with the reasons I draw cartoons.

Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in.Sell out, and you’re really buying into someone else’s system of values,rules and rewards.

The so-called “opportunity” I faced would have meant giving up my individual voice for that of a money-grubbing corporation. It would have meant my purpose in writing was to sell things, not say things. My pride in craft would be sacrificed to the efficiency of mass production and the work of assistants. Authorship would become committee decision. Creativity would become work for pay. Art would turn into commerce. In short, money was supposed to supply all the meaning I’d need.

What the syndicate wanted to do, in other words, was turn my comic strip into everything calculated, empty and robotic that I hated about my old job. They would turn my characters into television hucksters and T-shirt sloganeers and deprive me of characters that actually expressed my own thoughts.

On those terms, I found the offer easy to refuse. Unfortunately, the syndicate also found my refusal easy to refuse, and we’ve been fighting for over three years now. Such is American business, I guess, where the desire for obscene profit mutes any discussion of conscience.

You will find your own ethical dilemmas in all parts of your lives, both personal and professional. We all have different desires and needs, but if we don’t discover what we want from ourselves and what we stand for,we will live passively and unfulfilled. Sooner or later, we are all asked to compromise ourselves and the things we care about. We define ourselves by our actions. With each decision, we tell ourselves and the world who we are. Think about what you want out of this life, and recognize that there are many kinds of success.

Many of you will be going on to law school, business school, medical school, or other graduate work, and you can expect the kind of starting salary that, with luck, will allow you to pay off your own tuition debts within your own lifetime.

But having an enviable career is one thing, and being a happy person is another.

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.

You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them.

To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed,and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.

Reading those turgid philosophers here in these remote stone buildings may not get you a job,but if those books have forced you to ask yourself questions about what makes life truthful, purposeful, meaningful, and redeeming, you have theSwiss Army Knife of mental tools, and it’s going to come in handy all the time.

I think you’ll find that Kenyon touched a deep part of you. These have been formative years. Chances are, at least of your roommates has taught you everything ugly about human nature you ever wanted to know.

With luck, you’ve also had a class that transmitted a spark of insight or interest you’d never had before. Cultivate that interest, and you may find a deeper meaning in your life that feeds your soul and spirit. Your preparation for the real world is not in the answers you’ve learned, but in the questions you’ve learned how to ask yourself. Graduating from Kenyon, I suspect you’ll find yourselves quite well prepared indeed.

I wish you all fulfillment and happiness. Congratulations on your achievement.

 

Why You Should Never Check Your Email in the Morning

Checking email in the morning can be very disruptive to your whole day, not because email is bad but because it’s other-focused.

And this actually goes beyond email. Any communication method can be a disruption for you, especially in the morning.

As Seth Godin says, if you check your email in the morning…

“You’ve just surrendered not only a block of time but your freshest, best chance to start something new. If you’re an artist, a leader or someone seeking to make a difference, the first thing you do should be to lay tracks to accomplish your goals, not to hear how others have reacted/responded/insisted to what happened yesterday.“

When you wake up, ideally it’s because you are ready to start your day. You aren’t jarred awake by a bugle announcing breakfast, a child begging for something, or a boss pointing at you and telling you what to do. Hopefully you get up before all that – when the quiet of the morning allows your mind to think and even be in a serene state of calm.

It’s no coincidence that we have some of our best thoughts during a morning shower.

Your brain has just been dreaming and imagining for hours, of course it’s going to be flooded with great ideas in the morning. Research indicates that sleeping, by the way, is much more for our brains than for our body. But you already knew that didn’t you?

During Peace Corps, in an effort to be more physically fit, I would spend about 30 minutes every morning working out. I had read that exercising before breakfast burns up to 3 times more calories, since you’re exercising on an empty stomach. I can certainly feel the difference. In my own kind of fuzzy logic, this made me feel good thinking that it was as if I had just worked out for an hour and a half later in the day. Triple win.

The side benefit of doing this started to become a more primary motivation for me – exercising when I woke up helped clear my mind throughout the day. My body had that “tired” feeling in my muscles that feels wonderful and exhausted at the same time, and it was like the volume on everything around me had been turned down a notch. I didn’t get distracted or annoyed as easily, and I certainly felt much better about myself in general, so my confidence and patience went up as well. This clarity of mind made me feel 10 times more productive and focused. I didn’t need coffee, social media distractions, or someone to tell me what do to. I just did what I knew was right, and this changed from day to day.

When it comes down to it, most communication focuses on “someone telling you what to do.” Occasionally someone approaches you with the best question in the world, but that’s often too rare. Most communication focuses on: read this, respond to this, act on this, pay this, laugh at this, share this, be persuaded by this, support this. Right?

It’s no wonder that a full inbox stresses us out. Meetings, mailboxes (the old kind), clubs, leagues, committees, and teams can feel the same way. They demand action, energy and time from us. Oh and money. But honestly, money is the least valuable of the four. It’s our actions, time and energy that we wish we had more of right? The famous saying is, “I wish I had more hours in the day.” Why didn’t they say money? It’s because we want to do awesome things, we want to take part in action that is meaningful and we want to experience a life worth living.

Step one is don’t get distracted. By email, television, commitments or anything else that truly doesn’t matter to you. Focus on what you love. Make these things work in your favor. Write short emails that get straight to the point. Engage with others in a way that is meaningful and memorable. Refuse to waste time in meetings or committees that aren’t creating something valuable.

You might picture my time in Peace Corps being this isolated monk-like existence where I lived in a small tent in the middle of a field and milked my own cow to fill my cereal bowl in the morning. I don’t blame you, I sort of pictured that myself. But most Peace Corps Volunteers are surrounded by modern conveniences, no matter where they live. And in my case cereal can cost $10 a box, so even if I had my own cow I wouldn’t be putting the milk in cereal.

In Mongolia, I could check Facebook everyday at home or at work and I could sit on Gmail and chat all day long. This situation might be familiar to you as well. Instead, I chose to use those tools to benefit my community. I taught my doctor and nurse students how to set up email accounts, protect their computers from viruses and install english learning software. I created websites to raise money for projects, build a sports park, create a small handicraft business, told others about Peace Corps and self-published a book about it. I also occasionally watched The Daily Show on Comedy Central. But I tried, everyday, to not get distracted.

Don’t give away control of your attention to others – through email, Facebook, television or any other form of media. Use it to your advantage and your purposes instead. Those things, at their best, allow us to help others and connect more easily with them, and to bring us one step closer to changing the world and making it a better place for our future generations.

Step One: Wake up and start your day refreshed.

Step Two: Don’t check your email.

Step Three: You decide.

This essay is actually an excerpt from my book Enough.

I’d love for you to check it out.

One Easy Way to Make Your Clock More Fun and Helpful

Here’s a picture of my desktop.

You’ll notice in the top right that it tells me to slow down.

That’s because it’s almost 5 o’clock. At five it will say it’s Time to Relax.

And at 7 o’clock it will say Sleepy Time!

Here’s the general schedule right now.

What’s Up?

I work at home so it’s easy for me to carried away and work too hard, or too early, or too late.

I’m still playing with the times, but I already love that this helps me remember when to slow down.

It’s nice to have the computer remind me of how I want to live and let me know get too carried away.

Right now I’m also playing with “Awesome Time” in the mornings when I work on things I love, like en*theos and much more.

 

Wanna give it a try?

Download it here

 

Is America The Goodest Country In The World?

 Yes, I meant Goodest.

In his TED Talk Simon Anholt, founder of The Good Country Index, asks the question, “Which country does the most good for the world?”

According to him there are Good countries, Gooder countries and the Goodest Countries. I think that’s a fun idea.

What he shares in his talk isn’t an opinion. It’s research.

It’s a very detailed scale that measures every country in the world based on what they do for others, how generous they are and how much of a positive difference they make in the world.

I love that question and it doesn’t only apply to our countries, it applies to our organizations, our families and our personal lives.

Today, on our Independence Day here in America, I think it is an especially powerful question to ask.

Tomorrow is B Corp’s Interdependence Day, which I love, and I hope each of us takes that next step.

It’s important to be independent, strong, confident and passionate about your beliefs. But like I wrote earlier this week in 3 Things I Know About Love, I think interdependence, compassion and love are an even greater adventure.

We might not be the goodest country yet (the U.S. is ranked 21st right now) but I dream one day we will be.

As Simon says at the end of his talk,

“Ultimately that is what will make the change. That word “good,” and the discovery that’s behind it have changed my life. I think they can change your life, and I think we can use it to change the way that our politicians and our companies behave, and in doing so, we can change the world. I’ve started thinking very differently about my own country since I’ve been thinking about these things. I used to think that I wanted to live in a rich country, and then I started thinking I wanted to live in a happy country, but I began to realize, it’s not enough. I don’t want to live in a rich country. I don’t want to live in a fast-growing or competitive country. I want to live in a good country, and I hope that you do too.”

Happy Independence Day America.

And, in case I don’t see you tomorrow, Happy Interdependence Day too.

3 Things I Know About Love

It’s been three years today since Tunga and I were married in Mongolia.

I thought it would be fun to share three simple things I know about love which I’ve learned from Tunga.

1. Understand What Love Is For You

2. Be Enough By Yourself

3. Make Space in Your Life

Whether you are in a relationship or not, all of these lessons apply.

Understand What Love Is For You

Love means different things to everyone, but we rarely talk about that.

When Tunga and I first met, she didn’t English at all and we had to base our relationship on a simpler and more fundamental level – how we treated each other.

We worked together for many months and, like I shared a few weeks ago, she was the kindest person I had ever met.

For over five years since then we have gotten to know each other better every day, and one thing I’ve learned is that each of us speaks several different languages when it comes to love.

For instance, some of us really enjoy quality time or acts of service, others enjoy words of affirmation, physical touch or receiving gifts. These are just a few examples, but they are very powerful. If you learn how each of these “love languages” work it helps you in two every important ways: you learn what speaks most to you and it helps you understand what others are looking for as well.

Don’t worry, this isn’t about compatibility, it’s about understanding. As Like Nelson Mandela said, “If you speak to a man in a language he understands that goes to his head. If you speak to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”

When it comes to love, what we do speaks volumes. I encourage you to check out this fun quiz to learn more about yourself and the people most important to you. It’s a great idea to learn how to speak their language.

Be Enough By Yourself

There are several reasons my second book is named Enough, and one of the big reasons was Tunga. As I wrote in the book,

“Tunga didn’t need me… She was fine without me, actually she was great without me. She still is. That allowed us to start not from a place of dependency, where the other person fills some need in us, but instead from a place of appreciation.“

This was one of the things that attracted me to Tunga in the first place. She was comfortable being who she was, as a professional, as a sister and daughter, as a friend, as a person. She tried her best every day and she was clear about her values. She didn’t need anyone’s approval or have anyone to impress. She was who she was.

We all know how hard that is. That’s a life’s work. I know I’m still working on those things and I still have a long way to go. My point is, we need to know that that journey is ours. Tunga didn’t ask for help or expect someone to come fix things or save her. None of us should.

We are each the Harry Potters of our own lives. We all have a lightning bolt on our foreheads. It’s up to each of us to find out what our hero’s journey is and be confident enough to take the next step.

Just one step now is enough. And then later the step after that.

Be strong enough to take that next step by yourself.

Then, in a wonderful and miraculous kind of way, great people will find their way right there beside you.

Make Space in Your Life

That said, being enough by yourself doesn’t mean you hermit yourself off from the world.

On the other side of dependence is interdependence – where two people empower each other to be their authentic selves.

I remember reading once… If you bring someone over to your place and your room/apartment/life is clearly built for one person, what kind of message does that send? One pillow. One cup. One plate. One chair.

The message is: there is no space for them.

On the other hand, what if there are two or more pillows, cups, plates and chairs? Clearly, you are making space for someone special in your life.

This was a powerful message for me, not only in the physical space of my life but in my schedule and mind as well.

When I got older would my schedule magically open up and allow me more time to read stories to my kids, play sports, spend time with my partner, go on adventures and so on? Not likely.

It’s much more likely that things will seem busier and busier.

The lesson isn’t to wait and see how things turn out, it’s to make time for things that matter to you. If you want I want to read stories to my kids like my dad did to me (I do), I need to start practicing now (and I am).

If you want to have future amazing adventures, wonderful sleepy afternoons, play on sports teams and do lots of other great things with someone special, you had better make that space in your life now.

If you protect it now, you’ll have the discipline and confidence to do it later. And who knows, you may meet others (and maybe that someone) who value those things too.

Bonus Lessons

There are many more lessons I’d love to write about including how loving someone is loving the future them, realizing everything is temporary, knowing when the special moments are, working through jealousy, and how saying sorry and asking for forgiveness are different, but I will write about those here another time.

Right now it’s time to hug a special someone.

What a Wonderful Experience at Our First Book Reading!

Thank you everyone for a wonderful turnout at our first book reading of Questions for the Dalai Lama!

We had a great experience and time really flew by, it had been an hour before I even knew it.

We told the story of how the book started (which you can see here), read excerpts from the book, answered fun questions from our audience, signed copies of the book and had lots of great conversations.

I look forward to more readings this summer and maybe even a chance to speak on VPR in a few weeks. I’ll keep you posted on that.

Thanks again for your excitement everyone, this was a lot of fun!

Post by Travis Hellstrom.

Post by Travis Hellstrom.