An interesting section of the book How to Win Friends and Influence People discusses the value of being comfortable with the possibility of being wrong. Even if you 'know' you're right, starting a sentence with "I may be wrong, but this is how I see it" seems to be a much better way to have a conversation.   I put 'know' in quotes because even if you feel very strongly about being right, it's hard to really know for sure. One thing that comes to mind is the viral photo of a dress that circulated some years back. You may have seen it. It's a striped dress that stirred up a lot of arguments ..read more

I'm going to start doing interviews with graffiti writers and have a question for you. Would you like to see/hear this kind of content on this show, or would you prefer it just stays the way it is? Right now, what I'm thinking is, I'll start releasing two episodes per week. One personal development style like we've been doing, and one graffiti interview style episode.   Would love your feedback. Feel free to reach out to me on Instagram @bus166, or if you're seeing this on YouTube, feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts. I appreciate all of your support over the years and am tryi ..read more

There's a part of your brain called the reticular activating system (RAS). It acts as a sort of filter. If you think about something a lot, the RAS will show you more of it. For example, if you want to buy a certain car, you might start seeing that car everywhere.   If you regularly think negative thoughts, your RAS may reveal more negativity that you might not have noticed otherwise. On the other hand, thinking more positive thoughts, like the goals you want to accomplish, can program your RAS to help reveal steps and ideas to move you toward those goals.   What are you programming ..read more

It's easy to put so much pressure on ourselves when trying to get something perfect. Sometimes the desire to get something exactly right can lead to not finishing at all. Sometimes striving for finished is better than striving for perfection. Don't half-ass it, but get it done ..read more

If we want things to get better, whether that is in our community, family, or even the world, it starts with improving ourselves. It may not seem like making ourselves better will help anything, but you never know who's watching.   No matter who you are, it's likely that you improving yourself will influence another to do the same. That person improving can influence others. Who knows what kind of chain reaction that can cause ..read more

How to you treat the mundane tasks in your life? It's often easy to half-ass the basic tasks that seem meaningless, but how does that look to those around you? How does it look to your own subconscious?   There are lots of phrases that talk about this kind of thing. How you do one thing is how you do everything comes to mind. If we half-ass one thing because we think it isn't important, we're probably coming up short in other areas.   Life is full of mundane tasks. Doing them well raises our standards and influences all aspects of life ..read more

Something I've been trying to change about my mindset is when I hear about someone else's success when it's greater than what I've accomplished, I often allow that to make me feel bad about my own success. On the flip side, when I hear about someone failing, I often feel better about my situation.   Both of these feel wrong and unproductive. If I'm not happy to see other people winning, am I programming my subconscious mind to think I don't like winning? Some people feel that this can have a reverse effect on the law of attraction. By being unhappy about other people winning, it is said t ..read more

On my way to the shop yesterday, I was thinking about the 'good old days'. It was sparked when I did a style of graffiti that I hadn't done in close to 30 years. The 70+ comments on the piece on Instagram got me thinking about things like nostalgia and hanging onto the past.   Then a famous and profound quote came to mind: "I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve left them”. This was from the American version of the TV show The Office. The way I see it is, there are a couple ways to look at things like this.   We can look back on those days and wish w ..read more

Something I need to remind myself of regularly is that the time is going to pass one way or the other. What I mean by this is, the timeline is ticking away whether or not we do what we need to do. For example, if we want to get in better shape, start a business, scale a business, learn a skill, etc., and we put it off, that time is going to pass.   Say a decision was made to accomplish a goal, then three months later, we haven't even started. How far along would we be in that three months? Years can go by with us saying "I should get going on that" and we haven't moved the needle at all ..read more

Most have probably heard the quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” or some variation of it. There's also a version of the concept in the book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People talking about sharpening the saw.   Sharpening the axe or saw is about preparation and being more effective. The concept of taking time to prepare rather than just powering through with a dull tool is can be applied to pretty much any aspect of your life.   I was listening to a podcast recently, the guy getting interview ..read more