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

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

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

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

Have you ever sat back and wondered where the hell that breakthrough is? You know the one. After you faced the storms and had yourself ripped apart and torn to shreds. After Life used your head as a basketball, made you stumble, made you fall, made you crawl on your broken knees. Every possible circumstance that could have sucked did just that and a little more. So, where is the breakthrough? Bankrupt, one rejection after the next from every possible direction until you’ve lo

What if I handed you a strange looking object that you really weren’t sure about? You didn’t know what it was, what it did, what it could do… It just looked kind of futuristic and mysterious. And after I handed it to you, I told you that it had a type of magical power. It could make all of your dreams come true. The car, the house, the debt-free living. Maybe a little fame and some fortune. All of this, but it all rests within how you handled this curious object that I gave y

So I’ve spent the last week learning how to put together a website using WordPress. By early next month, I plan to have this whole site that you’re on now, completely converted over to the new one. The reason I’m switching it over is because the functionality of the new platform is worlds above what I’m using now. The only issue is, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE HELL I’M DOING! Well, had no idea. It took a lot of YouTube videos and reading various articles to learn exactly what wid