Punk's not Dead, It's just Getting Older

Aging and rock n' roll don't go well together. When I listen to the music I love, especially old punk songs that nobody around me cares about anymore, I feel hopelessly doomed to a world where I keep getting older and the punk kids stay the same age.

Tonight Ted Leo, a DC punk hero, is playing an all ages benefit show and I'm dying to go. I don't hang out with many people that care anymore. My heart breaks to every drum beat. It wakes me up to every sprouting grey hair.

When I was about 20 years old I got free tickets to a Ramones show. I showed up with this girl and we laughed

Three Steps to Unconditional Confidence

There are two kinds of confidence: the kind you pump up and the kind to which you wake up.

Conditional confidence comes from some kind of credential. If I read a book about cooking, I'm confident I know something about cooking. If I get a promotion at work, I have confidence that my colleagues see me a certain way. But if I get fired I might lose confidence in the way my colleagues see me. 

Sometimes I'm walking down the street, totally wrapped up in my thoughts: "How can I be better at my job? Do people really like me?" Blah blah blah...

Training Your Mind and Communicating Genuinely

Discipline: coming back to the practice. 

My neighbor has a great big dog. It's a little smaller than a horse. You can't go outside with a dog like that without training it first. Otherwise, it'll just pull you down the street, terrifying every man, woman and child along the way.

Our minds are kind of like big burly mastiffs. They are strong, energetic and often willful. If we don't train our minds, they'll pull us down the street in any direction they feel like going. It seems odd to think you can steer a course to happiness without training your mind first.

Training your mind requires exertion and discipline as a starting point. When your mind starts to run off,

Where Courage is Born

A friend of mine told me a story in which his wife was pissed off. She let him have it with a list of grievances about the things he does wrong and how unhappy she is with their relationship. She couldn't keep her feelings bottled up anymore and wanted him to have a taste.

My friend suffered. It hurt to hear these things, but in this heated moment he experienced clarity. His ego shut off. His wife's words were like noise that didn't warrant a reaction. He noticed her heart and the suffering she radiated. It was like he allowed his brain to quit reacting so that their hearts could synchronize.