David Ramos's Blog, page 6

Messy, Fake, New, and Never

Fake boobs get a bad rap.

I mean, they look great (most of the time). They give their owners confidence. They create jobs (like actual medical jobs, not whatever you were thinking Steve! Get your head out of the gutter.)

They’re an all-around win for everyone. But there’s that word, “fake,” which drags it all down.

We hate fake.

It’s the first jab we throw when sensing inauthenticity, or like we’re being manipulated, or when something appears to be less than its original (or our expectation of it).

B...

Challenge #5: Letting Go to Find the Flow

So much of our mental health comes down to perspective.

It’s in the seeing differently that everything else — the thinking and acting and feeling — come together in a new way. A better way.

Today, we get to practice this with flow.

Preview of downloadable PDF below.

Here’s this week’s challenge:

Start at the top of the page, near the uphill symbol, and write out a hard thing you're facing in your life right now. The heaviness level is up to you, but I expect there’s at least one thing that popped i...

In Defense of Flow

While my California trip was lovely (thank you for asking 🌴), I did adopt an important task on my journey.

For most of the f-words we’ve covered so far, I’ve leaned heavily on my commonplace book — a collection of hundreds (and soon thousands) of notecards with ideas, quotes, and scribbles from all sorts of things I’ve stumbled across. Books, movies, conversations — you name it, there’s probably a notecard birthed from it.

The point is that it extends your brain. It makes it easier to connect far-...

Challenge #4: Freewriting on Freedom

To be free, you cannot change your cage. You have to change yourself.
— Lana Wachowski

Freedom needs room to grow. In your mind, life, schedule.

Start giving it that space, and you’ll be gobsmacked by what comes next. So, today, I’m giving you a taste of that.

Preview of downloadable PDF below.

Here’s how to use this week’s minimalist challenge page.

Choose any area on the page (upper left, bottom center, wherever) and start writing about a way you're free now that you weren’t 10 years ago. Just see...

Learning the Language of Freedom's Call

By the time you’re reading this, I’m approximately 2,452 miles away from my writing desk, sitting in the sands of a California beach, wondering why we chose to live in a place where the air hurts our faces for half the year.

It was with this trip on the horizon that I got to spend time thinking about this week’s f-word. It’s a tricky one; a pro at getting politicized and religionized; a concept that means very different things to very different people; a word that has a way of taking from some as...

Challenge #3: Applying the Fun Filter

Hello, and happy Wednesday!

This week’s challenge is an easy, and dare I even say fun, one. 😉

Week in and week out, these challenges are meant to help you apply some small part of Monday’s article so that your life and mind are pushed gently, subtly, in a more generous direction.

And today, that direction is towards lightness.

Preview of downloadable PDF below.

Here’s how to use this week’s colorful, squiggly doc.

On the left (boring) side of the page, write down three tasks you must complete this w...

The Way Fun Sees It

So, I totally had an idea of what this week’s post was going to look like, but the universe/life/Mr. Roger’s ghost had other plans.

I think the best place to start, then, is to invite you into my writing process a bit and give you a peak behind the curtain (don’t worry, I have pants on) so that by the time we wind ourselves around to today's f-word, you'll have everything you need.

The Process

Most of my new writing projects begin on a Thursday. That’s the day I wrap up tasks for the week, choose a...

Challenge #2: Pieces Parts of Failure's Plate

What a sticky little bugger failure is, right?

But now, because you read 👇, you can see its benefit (in a non-gross way).

Today’s challenge picks up where Monday’s article left off and asks you to visualize a bit of the learning. I actually made three different exercises for this topic, worked through them all, and this was the clear winner.

Only the best for you!

Preview of PDF download.

This beautiful image of a shattered plate and perfectly straight lines is available in the downloadable PDF b...

When Failure Becomes Many Things

In 5th grade, you’d find my chubby little frame at a school named Bethel.

Most of my memories from this time are pure gold. Playing Oregon Trail on Fridays. Celebrating “fall festival” because Halloween was a bit too spicy. Watching fellow classmates get paddled in the hallways that smelled like day-old PB&Js.

Great times.

But all that is just the backdrop for one of the stickiest failures I’ve ever experienced.

Now, when you look up stories about failure (like I did), you get some real whoppers. Pe...

Challenge #1: Naming the Fear

Welcome to what I think will be the coolest place on the internet every Wednesday morning!

Now, you’re here learning about loving your mind and all and it makes sense that we should pair learning with doing. But I wanted it to not be boring. If it felt like homework, we’re all screwed (unless you’re totally into that, like I was for most of my life, then you’re also totally welcome to see it that way, but I’m going to call it nerd-kink, and you can’t stop me).

Here’s what I came up with: The Hum...