We’re all guilty of this to some degree. In a world where everyone’s business is all over the internet, the temptation to talk about someone behind their back seems higher than ever. But not just talking behind people’s back, sometimes it's directly too while wielding the mighty keyboard via the comments or DMs.As we learn more about philosophy and its place in the world, we start to see people and things in our lives differently than we used to. Suddenly what is wrong with our own environment and the people in it becomes much more obvious.Gossip can be a guilty pleasure or an opportunity for self-reflection. Judgments on the surface seem to be wrong, but they can also be a signal to us! If we are able to catch ourselves in the midst of judging someone else, it can reveal to us something incredibly valuable that we would have never seen otherwise!The most self-aware people are NOT those who express their knowledge for attention and act the most righteous, but rather those who use their knowledge to self-reflect and become better people.It’s easy to feel better about ourselves by pointing out the faults in others. Sometimes it makes us feel like by doing so, we move further away from the faults we’re judging. But what if we were using the judgment of others as a defense mechanism? What if it was causing us to be even more disconnected from who we are and how we feel?“Let philosophy scrape off your own faults, rather than be a way to rail against the faults of others.” -Seneca

It is so easy for us to miss the forest through the trees. We live in the age of the “selfie.” The widespread perspective has become warped, where everything revolves around our own perception of ourselves. This causes us to put an undue amount of significance on everything we say and do while taking everything personally. One of the most valuable skills we can cultivate is self-awareness. Self-awareness is typically assumed as one’s preferences in life and “knowing yourself.” But this mentality leads more towards self-obsession. Self-awareness is cultivated by zooming out from self-obsession and seeing the nature of who you are and what you’re a part of.  "How beautifully Plato put it. Whenever you want to talk about people, it’s best to take a bird’s- eye view and see everything all at once— of gatherings, armies, farms, weddings and divorces, births and deaths, noisy courtrooms or silent spaces, every foreign people, holidays, memorials, markets— all blended together and arranged in a pairing of opposites.” Marcus Aurelius.“Consider too the lives once lived by others long before you, the lives that will be lived after you, the lives lived now among foreign tribes; and how many have never even heard your name, how many will soon forget it, how many praises you but quickly turn to blame. Reflect that neither memory nor fame, nor anything else at all, has any importance worth thinking of.” -Marcus Aurelius Take a moment right now to zoom out from where you are. Observe your environment, the people in it, the country you live in, the planet. See yourself connected and part of existence. From this view how big do your problems actually feel? Remember this whenever you feel lost or alone.

“He has the most who is content with the least.” -Diogenes “It is not the man who has little, but he who desires more, that is poor.” -Seneca “He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.” -SocratesWhat if we could find contentment and inner peace right here right now? What if everything you were chasing was just taking you further away from yourself. Imagine a world where we could all perceive this.The most important thing we can learn is how to be content right now. It is an instant ROI on your time and energy.The happiest people are those who are present in the moment and desire the least.“The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately. True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so, wants nothing. -Seneca You may not have everything you think you need at this moment, but you still have this moment. It is a moment that wasn’t promised to you, yet here you are. Alive and aware. What simple thing can you be grateful for right now?

Micah has been training in martial arts for over 28yrs. Including Muay Thai and San Shou kickboxing, as well as wrestling in high school. After discovering BJJ in 2006 he decided to dedicate the rest of his martial arts career to grappling.Micah has functioned as an assistant striking coach for kickboxing and MMA. He has also worked as a competitive gymnastics coach for the past 12 years, as well as a strength and conditioning coach.Micah was also an affiliated athlete for the World Freerunning and Parkour Federation. Hosting the MTV Ultimate Parkour Challenge Crash tour in Austin, TX, and one of the first certified movement/ parkour coaches in the nation certified by the WFPF.Follow him on IG @corsairbjjhttps://corsairbjj.com/

“We think that the world is limited and explained by its past. We tend to think that what happened in the past determines what is going to happen next, and we do not see that it is exactly the other way around! What is always the source of the world is the present; the past doesn't explain a thing. The past trails behind the present like the wake of a ship and eventually disappears.” -Alan Watts

You don’t have to sacrifice all practicality in order to pursue your creative passions. There is no rule that your creative passions need to become your vocation and that you need to do what you love every day. What happens to that creative energy when it’s suppressed? Life is full of pain, suffering, and unpleasant emotions. Our creative energy is born out of these experiences, and failing to explore and express these things through our creative outputs can be the path to resolving what we think to be meaningless suffering. What if your creative aspirations were a form of therapy for your soul?Creativity is where you find your Zen. It is a place where time ceases to exist and all parts of you feel alive! This is how we make the most out of our pain and suffering.The best thing you could do for yourself is to express what exists within you rather than hide it. Without doing this, you will never know your full potential.It can be scary to show yourself to the world. We wonder “what if I’m made fun of?” or “what if someone turns this video into a viral autotune song?” This makes us feel lost and alone. As we said in a previous episode, find yourself through your practice, build your confidence through competence, connect with others by sharing your gifts.“Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end, the question can only be answered by action. Do it or don't do it. It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don't do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet. You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God. Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It's a gift to the world and every being in it. Don't cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you've got.” -Stephen Pressfield  “The War of Art”

“One of the key paradoxes in Buddhism is that we need goals to be inspired, to grow, and to develop, even to become enlightened, but at the same time we must not get overly fixated or attached to these aspirations. If the goal is noble, your commitment to the goal should not be contingent on your ability to attain it, and in pursuit of our goal, we must release our rigid assumptions about how we must achieve it. Peace and equanimity come from letting go of our attachment to the goal and the method. That is the essence of acceptance." — Dalai LamaWe need goals in order to have a sense of direction. If we don’t have goals, we don’t have any boundaries to base decision making, and ultimately get dragged around by the highs and lows of our environment. Life is lived in the process, not the outcome. One of the biggest problems goal settings creates is that it becomes a metric of self-worth and often times what a person attaches their identity to. This creates unnecessary noise and stress during the pursuit where a person questions their own self-worth. What if we based goals around a process that is truly fulfilling rather than the outcome itself? The way to get the most out of the goals you set is to fall in love with the process. Orient goals around a fulfilling process and you win whether or not you achieve the goal. There is no worse feeling than investing time, energy, blood, sweat, and tears into a goal and then achieving it only to be met immediately with an anticlimactic feeling of emptiness. Know when to say “fuck it” and move on to something else. “Never give up” sounds inspiring in a Rocky movie, but is wildly uninspiring in real life while in pursuit of something fundamentally meaningless to you.

We all want to feel better about ourselves. Life is difficult, there is pain and suffering and sometimes, we would love nothing more than for there to be a quick fix, or for things to be easier and less difficult. And sometimes we turn to things like excessive positive thinking or pumping up our confidence as a means of making things easier on ourselves. We’ve become addicted to expediency and expectation. What if instead, we approached life with curiosity and appreciation? Building competence in an area of difficulty and developing tested principles is the best use of your time and energy. Pumping yourself up with positive affirmations without developing competency and understanding is a gamble.Bottom line. True confidence comes from competence, experience, and exposure. False confidence comes from delusions of grander, expediency, and conviction over our crutches. (Technology, money, food/drugs, status, relationships)

After surviving a few near-death experiences and overcoming addiction, codependency, and anxiety; Kevin has dedicated his life to sharing how he did it and the wisdom he learned in the process. Kevin is on a mission to end trauma and assist human evolution. He utilizes coaching, visionary leadership, and trauma-informed bodywork to fuel his vision of positively impacting the trajectory of the human race.His bold “tough love” strategy, combined with trauma-informed unique practical guidance, has helped tens of thousands of people from all over the world break toxic cycles, heal emotional and relational traumas, and live with more self-love, healthier relationships, and inner fulfillment.Find Kevin at:www.heartguy.comwww.dark72.com@the.heart.guy 

We hear people say all the time, “I want to be happy,” or “do what makes you happy.”This advice is hardly useful in any practical way because what we think makes us happy is actually an abstraction of actual happiness. Happiness is not a thing you can go and get, it is a state of being, yet most people associate the concept of happiness with an external result or outcome. There’s a lot of “I’ll be happy if/when” type of mentality out there.You cannot pursue happiness because there is nothing to chase. It's not running from you.Imagine a world where we didn’t believe the lie that happiness exists outside of us? What might be possible?