The Wild Dog Blog

Category: mindfulness

  • The Morning Ritual

    How joyful is it to sit outside at sunrise and listen to the birds starting their day? Their energy rises with the sun – at first their calls are soft and sleepy, but as the sun rises they crescendo into a brilliant chorus. If I counted each unique call, how many would there be? I hear calls from the woodpecker, the owl, the blue jay, and the little brown bird with the yellow on its chest. I’m reminded that this is their home too. 

    As the sun gets higher, the birds get quieter. Their morning ritual is coming to an end. They’ve greeted the day, rejoiced, and now it’s time to move on to the day’s work. It’s time for me to move on too. I’m tempted to stay a little longer in the ease of the morning, but I can’t delay when there’s a day waiting to be lived.

  • Begin Again

    How many times do we begin again in this life? Probably more than we realize. I think it’s possible that we all make small choices everyday that allow for renewal, without even noticing. 

    Making an effort to be kind to someone you’ve been dismissive of, engaging with a stranger when you normally would avoid conversation, picking up a book instead of your phone, starting a new journal – are all split second decisions made in fleeting moments. But that doesn’t make them trivial. 

    Beginning again doesn’t always have to happen in the form of a life altering decision or big leap of faith. It can happen in the barely noticeable changes in how we show up and the choices we make and the “hops” of faith that take us farther than we ever could have predicted.

  • Smile When You Stumble

    When a young child is learning to walk and stumbles, we smile and appreciate their flawed effort. But when we’re learning and stumble, we berate ourselves and resent our shortcomings. We watch children struggle with a light heart because we believe in their resiliency and the important role that missteps will play in their growth. But we rarely offer this same belief to ourselves.

    Smile when you stumble. It’s a humbling part of being human and gives you the opportunity to rise.

  • Steady Like a Boat

    Be steady like a boat. Even though it doesn’t know its destination or how long it will have to endure each passing storm – it doesn’t waver. For the boat, the only choice is onward – with faith in the horizon that awaits.

  • Writing as a Teacher

    Writing has taught me to just start and figure out the rest later. It’s taught me to act without a plan and without knowing if what I’m doing will ever mean anything to anyone but me.

    It’s taught me to explore for the sake of exploring and with no outcome in mind. 

    A decade of putting words onto paper privately and I’m just now venturing into what it looks like to share some of those words publicly. I couldn’t have known how rewarding it would be to do so when I bought my first journal 10 years ago.

     It’s a testimony to acting without knowing. What interests or curiosities are you not acting on because you can’t perceive a clear goal or outcome? Act first and let the purpose reveal itself over time.

  • To Seek Joy is to Create Joy

    Joy is possible in life but it’s never going to find you or be magically dumped in your lap. I’ve learned that there’s a certain amount of seeking and cultivating that goes into living a joyful life. 

    Understanding this can either add to your resistance and resentment, or it can add to your joy. We’re often more deeply rewarded by that which comes by taking agency than by that which comes by no effort. This doesn’t mean forcing joy or positivity when you’re struggling or enduring something really challenging. It means living in a state of seeking. Is there joy to be found in unlikely places or mundane moments if you look and listen closely?

    To knock is to invite a door to be opened. To seek joy is to create joy.

  • Like Kids Playing on a Playground

    Play must be a part of movement for it to be sustainable and for it to actually change who you are. For all the talk of goals – where is the talk of play? I don’t mean it’s always “fun” – although it certainly can be and maybe is often. By “play,” I mean playing the way a child plays – doing the thing for no other reason than the doing itself. 

    At what point did you lose your recognition of the joy in the doing? At what point did you start judging the value of a pursuit solely based on its outcome? I’ve said it a thousand times and I’ll keep saying it: outcomes are fleeting, uncontrollable, and unpredictable – making it impossible for them to be lasting sources of fulfillment. 

    But the doing is not fleeting and is within our control. The doing is forever and never has to end. The doing is a bottomless well of fulfillment – you can draw as much joy, excitement, and inspiration from it as your intent allows. 

    To move and train and compete like kids playing on a playground means that as good as achievement feels, it doesn’t really matter. You show up and play regardless. Because getting to put your heart into something is the cake and anything that follows is a cherry on top.

  • A Fresh Start

    We celebrate the fresh start of a new year, failing to realize we’re given the opportunity of a fresh start with each new day.

  • Be Like The Mollusk

    The mollusk’s life work is its shell.

    Layer by layer it builds its shell from the surrounding environment over the course of its lifetime. It doesn’t do so because of reward or recognition and it knows nothing of outcomes – it simply keeps showing up to build. For the mollusk, the act of showing up and building something is enough.

    When the mollusk dies, the shell is released and carried away by the sea. Sometimes the shell finds its way to shore where it gets picked up by human hands and cherished as something beautiful. But the mollusk didn’t build its shell with this outcome in mind. It was doing what it intuitively knew it had to do until it couldn’t anymore, and the shell became something beautiful to the world in its own time.

    How could you be more like the mollusk? Where in your life could you be more present with the showing up – the building, the crafting, and the creating?

    As you go about your week, notice how your concern with outcomes influences the quality and presence with which you work at the things that are important to you. When you let go of outcomes and allow the work itself to be the reason and the reward, you’ll no longer need validation to show up each day and give your best effort.

  • The Potential for Positive Impact is Everywhere

    I spent one summer during college working for a youth soccer company. My job as a coach was to show up at schools and parks and make soccer fun, exciting, and educational for young kids. But from the beginning, my bosses instilled in me that while the needs of the kids always took priority, what I had to offer was much wider reaching. 

    They taught me that from the second I arrived at a school or park to the second I left, I had the potential to positively impact anyone and everyone, not just the kids. Within the context of my role this included school administrators, teachers, security guards, park staff, receptionists, parents, and curious bystanders. Did my job technically require me to hold the door open for a teacher, or to thank a security guard, or to take interest in the lives of the parents? No. But I could never know what kind of a day someone was having, and little gestures of kindness could go a long way in making a positive impact. 

    We’re all taught from a young age to be respectful and polite. But it was empowering to learn that in engaging with the person in front of me, offering kindness, or showing interest in their life – I could potentially be playing a more meaningful role in their day than I would ever come to know. It’s a lesson that’s made my life more exciting, driven me to be more present, and is why you can almost always catch me striking up a conversation with the barista at Starbucks or with the check-out clerk at Trader Joe’s.