My younger cousin is graduating from college. Penn State University Class of 2020 School of Engineering. I’m so proud of this dude I could explode. He and I had one of those really deep talks that you walk away from knowing that it really mattered. Knowing that it was an important conversation. “Everything is going to be different in August”, he told me referring to the fact that he’d be back home and not up at school–working at an engineering firm and not worrying about phys

I hate this so much. There isn’t one part of me that that finds anything appealing about where we are right now. Shut in from friends and family and the accompanying presence of constant fear when we do step outside to get some groceries or fresh air. This sucks. Actually, this fucking sucks. And I especially hate all of these commercials showcasing how close we can all be over a Zoom call. There isn’t a single appealing thing about all of this. It’s a damn nightmare and we n

Does that resonate with you? It didn’t matter how much had come against you in previous pursuits, you just kept getting up and doing what you really truly didn’t feel like doing at the time in order to achieve a specific end. You pushed through what you had to push through to get there. Maybe going to that 8am class or that 8pm class after you worked all day. Maybe you got to the gym when you only wanted to go to bed. Maybe you chose to eat something clean rather than the piz

So much can  happen in just a year. It was within this last year that,  first I went bankrupt and then I got hired in the highest paying position I’ve ever had. It was within this last year that I went from living in a bedroom, single, and lonely to having a baby on the way with a girl and a family that has brought more color to my life than I thought possible. And we live in a house. With so much that can happen in a year, imagine how much can happen in a year You may not be

The last thing I’m feeling right now is hopeful. What I’m mostly feeling right now is what most of us are probably feeling right now… Uncertainty, irritation, fear. Uncertain about the future of not just our immediate community but the whole world. I mean it really feels like we’re in a movie–the whole world working towards the same end. That only happens when aliens blow up buildings and Will Smith saves the day. Irritation because our lives have completely changed. Almost i

I’m going to be a dad. And I’m going to be a dad to a boy. Erin and I found out that we were going to have a baby back in December. When she called me, in a bit of a panicked state, I was completely calm–almost excited. I’m 34, that’s not old but I still started to feel that if I were destined to be a dad it would have happened by now. And, this is only biologically speaking. I’m still close with my ex-girlfriend’s daughter, Laila. I’ve been in her life since she was one and

Don’t answer that! It’s a stupidly easy question to answer. I don’t have the money. I don’t have the resources. I don’t have the talent. I don’t have what they have. It’s stupidly easy to see the stupid amount of roadblocks between us and success. We are naturally negative creatures with built-in psychological mechanisms that whisper to us why we can’t do anything. Probably has something to do with evolution. Survival of the fittest. That sort of thing–self-preservation. To g

A good friend at my recent book signing looked down at the five books I had on display at the signing table and asked, “How the hell do you find time to do this on top of working full-time and everything else you have going on?” I really hadn’t thought about it like this and the easiest thing I could think to say to Chris was, “When you love something, you always find time for it.” And that is absolutely true for me. There are things that I know I have to do, like pay bills a

I moved back to Pittsburgh from Los Angeles in 2017. My heart was broken and so was my bank account. The only thing that I seemed to be able to get myself to do was go to the gym. I had belonged to LA Fitness when I lived in California and switched my membership over when I moved back home. I was pretty relentless, even doing “two-a-days” meaning, exactly as it sounds, going twice a day. The thing that I was most consistent with was ensuring that I got on the StairMaster for

Once you’ve read several different books or articles on success or watched different speakers teach on the subject of attaining that illusive wonder called, success, you start to notice common threads in what is being said or written. One common thing that I’ve noticed is to be thankful now for things that haven’t even happened yet. Part of that is having a vision for where you want to be. I’m pretty lost when I meet someone that says they have no vision or desire to see wher

I’ve taken some time away from writing recently. I’ve had a lot happening this summer from moving in with my girlfriend to starting a new job to going back to grad school to leaving that new job because I hated it… Lots of things going on. I’ve also been trying to realign my focus and determine the things that are most important to me. Writing obviously being one of those things, I knew I wouldn’t be away for long. And here I am. The other things… I’m working on them. Can’t g

My issue is that I focus on the one bad thing when there are at least one-hundred good things. My mind stretches toward perfection, a deep yearning for something this world does not contain. There is pain, suffering, and sorrow. There is not ONLY pain, suffering, and sorrow. There is also joy, peace, rest, excitement, and fulfillment. My focus easily rests on the former list yet evades the latter list with an intensity I can’t describe. To me, if not everything is great and e

I’ll be happy if all of the conditions of my life meet the standard I’ve set in order to allow myself the luxury of feeling happy. If the bills have all been paid and I have money left over, if I have the job I love and don’t hate, if I’m in relationship with the perfect person, if I’ve achieved every dream I’ve ever had, if my kids are themselves happy, pleasant, and self-sufficient, if, if, if… What an endless list and journey to reach the destination of being happy that yo

I always notice that the posts that get the most likes on almost any social media platform are the ones where there’s a win involved. What do I mean by a win? Just a positive life experience. A good move in a good direction. People get pumped when they see something good happening in someone’s life. Well, most people, we’ll ignore the “haters” for the sake of the point I’m making here. I had over 350 likes on a Facebook post that I wrote about starting work at Pitt in a divis

It’s pretty hard to believe that I’m coming up on another book release. The craziest part is that it’s at Barnes & Noble. I always knew I’d write at least one book because my life has been so damn crazy. What I didn’t expect was to have written five books within four years. And having the chance to have a second release event at Barnes & Noble is a huge deal. Why is it such a huge deal? Because all of my work has been self-published. I don’t have a big New York publishing hou

This is not something I am particularly good at. I’m very weak here actually. I definitely would not teach a class on being a better truster. Trust is one of the hardest things I’ve ever tried doing. What goes on in my head does not match reality at all. And I believe all of it. Every time. I was explaining this to someone I’m really practicing this trust thing with. And it’s not practice because of who she is, but because of my crazy insecure brain. At dinner, I grabbed two

I host a podcast called, The Craven Effect, and on an episode called, “The Waiting Place”, I interviewed a great friend of mine. Pastor Dave and I talked about the different moments in life where we are going through a process and where we are in a place of waiting. That’s not what I want to talk about here. There are some great points about this type of process in life and you can listen to the full podcast HERE But what I want to talk about is something we mentioned on the

Sometimes we need that don’t we? I know I do. And that’s why I’m telling you right now that I believe with all of my heart that you can and will make it. This darkness that’s covered seems so dark, but there is light, there is respite, and it’s coming your way. Let life wrap it’s love around you in this moment. Let peace breathe deep into your lungs and fill your body with strength and calm and content. Let your mind release all of its tension and allow it to playfully drift

I just realized something about myself. I get really excited about new projects that I start and immediately want to forget about the other thing I was working on. But I’m thankful that I do see projects through to the end, even when I get excited about something new. I think that’s a distinguishing quality of people that are successful. They can see things through to completion. Which is a tricky task especially when you’re a creative because new things hit you in such a spo

This is the 200th blog post I’ve written since 2015 when I started my first website. An average post is around 600 words–sometimes less, sometimes more–which means that I’ve written, so far, an average of 120,000 words. Most novels are about 40,000 words. So that means I’ve written about three books worth of blog content. Not to mention the books that I have written that are separate from the blogs; Choice and Triumph(2016), Be a Hero to Your Heart(2017), Two-Step Success(201