In the last video I looked at sort of a minimum level of “selfishness”, where no matter how giving and universal and selfless that we choose to be, there’s always something a little bit special, it seems, about our little corner of the universe, that leads us to put a little bit of special attention […]

I’m looking at how to get a good balance between looking out for myself versus looking out for the big picture, the people around me, maybe even the whole universe. Selfishness versus selflessness. How do we find the right balance? Now, some would say that selfishness is entirely bad, and we should be entirely selfless,

We see a big part of every spiritual tradition, all these kind of teachings about wisdom and all this kind of thing, a big factor is this thing that might be called ego. And you know, that’s a very modern kind of psychological term, and there’s so many different words that can be used for

Some days, it feels like trying to stay on a good path, trying to do good things, work towards a better future: it can sometimes become very difficult to stay on this good path when it is so tempting to just give up and do all the bad habits, all the time wasting, just to

When we look at all the possibilities for escapism and entertainment and imagination, worlds of fantasy and adventure and excitement: we seem to have this need for something that feels great, it feels like a big adventure, it feels exciting, it feels wonderful. We just can’t be fully satisfied with something that’s just OK. Now,

One of the biggest clichés in self-development is the power of gratitude. You’ll hear so many different versions about how bringing out this feeling of gratitude, being grateful for everything that you have, no matter how bad your current state is, all the blessings and gifts that you have, and being aware of this and

I’ve been talking about this idea of being “normal” versus being “weird”, you know, fitting in with some kind of sense of what is the way to do things, the normal way, the standard, respectable, good way, versus doing something that just seems off, so you’re like “No, that’s not how you do things. That’s

One of the difficult things for so many people, including myself, is this struggle with perfectionism, this idea of trying to make everything perfect, which maybe needs a better name, because it really does not seem to lead to anything close to perfection. And clearly anybody looking from outside can look at me, or anybody

Talk talk talk talk talk talk talk. You know that feeling when there’s just too much talking, and it’s like the words that are being said start to lose their meaning. The words start to just sound like nonsense noise. I think we can get that feeling if we simply repeat any word enough times.

To make one more point about fitting in to society: one more thing about it is that, as it’s always changing, the situation, the environment, the ecosystem, the world that this society is living in, we’re constantly undergoing change and transformation, as old ways gradually fade and new ways appear and take over. Of course,