David Ramos's Blog, page 5

Challenge #10: Starry Eyed Surprise

We’re closing this series with a doozy. A big leap. A hail mary of an f-word.

But I honestly couldn’t think of a better place to land because everything we’ve worked through has led us to this point.

Every feeling you encounter and overcome and train and befriend is so that this can happen — so that you can believe beautiful thoughts. About yourself, your life. About the world and the people in it.

Faith is an optimistic reach. And it starts like this.

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Our final f-word exercise:

The goal ...

What We Lose When We Lose Our Faith

The only reason I’m writing this to you now is because my life hasn’t gone as planned.

In 2019, I quit my job in higher ed to write books. Books about God, about Christianity, about faith.1 But if I’m honest, by that point, none of it felt true anymore. I wasn’t quite yet an outright heathen (see: democrat2), but something was breaking. And it had been cracking for a long time.

The day I graduated from Ashland Theological Seminary.

The cracks came slowly at first. A disappointment here. An inconsis...

Challenge #9: Two Minutes, One Side, All the Power

When you’re life centers around wielding power over others (through blame, shame, revenge), it inevitably becomes about the power they wield over you.

The alternative is not giving up or being “weak.” It’s stepping into a different kind of power. A selfish sort.

An autonomy that doesn’t quite make sense to outsiders. Forgiveness is a superpower in a world run by tit-for-tat. It frees you from what you must do and opens your existence up to…everything else.

Preview of PDF below.

Let’s play with th...

The You-Half of Forgiveness

God, do I love a good Jason Statham movie.

Especially the revenge ones. Wrath of Man. Beekeeper.

They're just 90-minute ensembles of the most satisfying carnage imaginable. The broken bones become therapeutic. We like watching him win; taking back what he lost, through violence.

It feels right. Like justice. Like how the world should work.

Bad guys do bad things. Good guys beat the living shit out of them until order is restored. A masculine love story.

But we all know that’s not true.

In the real wor...

Challenge #8: A Moment in the Fire

What if everything is for you?

Everything you feel — all the roadblocks and headaches — every missed exit and inconvenient detour.

What if even your most negative emotions were trying to fight for you, not against you, in building the life you want?

Frustration and anger are not the keys to your power, but they are the roadsigns. They are the buzzing alarm clocks screaming to get your attention back on who you are and what you’re capable of. They are the mechanisms your mind uses to protect itse...

Frustration's Quiet Little Fire

Our family home burned down when I was 9.

Now, this sounds wayyy more traumatic than it was because we weren’t actually living in it yet. The house was a 4-bed, 2-bath colonial revival (for my fellow architecture nerds) that sat on a corner lot, a 5-minute bike ride from the local high school.

Two weeks before we were set to move in, the current inhabitant, a lifelong smoker at the ripe age of 73, decided it was a good time for an at-home oil change. So, he moseyed his way into the garage for some...

Challenge #7: Focus at the Center

Small is my advantage, and it can be yours too.

Today, let’s uncover a bit more of what a focused life might look like for you.

Preview of PDF below.

Pro tip: This exercise is a good one to do in silence. Find a place or lock a door and give yourself a few minutes of quiet to think on the following steps.

Starting on the left side of the page, where the arrows point outwards, jot down everything taking up space in your mind right now. Tasks, to-dos, conversations, worries.. all of it. Word vomit ...

What We Miss About Focus

It’s when you set aside your distractions that you begin to see what you were distracting yourself from. — Johann Hari

I’ve never been what society at large would call athletic. But not for lack of enthusiasm.

In middle school, I joined our (objectively) terrible basketball team. To give you an idea of just how bad we were, one time, we faced a Jewish rival. The kids on the other team were kind and hilarious, but they had one major flaw. For some reason, their yarmulkes kept falling off during th...

The Last Conspiracy

Enjoy this MISCellaneous article as we take a break from our main series this week.

In late 2016, after a near brush with death in the cold, harsh lands of the South Pole, Buzz Aldrin, astronaut and American hero, tweeted this ominous warning, “We are all in danger. It is evil itself.”

Attached to the warning was a single image: a pyramid-shaped mountain from the inner terrain of the South Pole.

Sixty years before this incident, Admiral Richard E. Byrd led the largest expedition into the secret la...

Challenge #6: Fake It, Let's Time Travel

Becoming someone or something you’ve never been before is incredibly intimidating. But you’ve already done it.

Lots of times.

You’ve faked and fought and finagled your way into newness more times than you’ve realized. Hopefully, this will jog your memory.

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Here’s this week’s challenge.

We’re going to work left to right and then jump around in this one. Start by doodling a sketch of yourself in the circle labeled Past. Choose a version of you that’s obviously different than today. Add ...