Alchemy For Life Podcast – Listen on itunes, Spotify
Podcasts are every Sunday and are either a 10 minute short article that can help you, or a 45 minute interview with someone who has done amazing things! Find them on iTunes, Tunein, podchaser, podbean, last.fm, spotify and google musi
If I were you…
Advice Who doesn't like giving advice? Who doesn't like receiving it? Wait, put your hands down, that was rhetorical. In all seriousness sometimes we need to ask for advice (we can't all be in a bubble) and we are lucky that someone values our wisdom enough to ask us...
Conf Calls, Promises and Who is Actually Talking
The olden days of voice only In the olden days when people wanted to collaborate they would jump on a conference call vs. jumping on a video call. It was extremely common to have a number of calls during any given week, and the larger the business the more conference...
The Challenge of Perspective
Sometimes you get the chance to see something from two perspectives.
Sometimes both perspectives come from the same person.
Sometimes that person is you.
Protecting Your Energy
If someone gives you a certain amount of time to do a thing, the first thing your brain does is assess the amount of energy it takes to do that. And that’s how you assess if you have been given enough time.
Feeling Safe & Relaxed – Parasympathetic Nervous System
Parasympathetic Nervous System The network of nerves that creates the system that's known for the 'rest and digest' feelings is the parasympathetic nervous system. This system is what aids in digestion, slows your heart rate and give you general feelings of well...
Too Many Words
Stroke support Group Recently, I sat in on a stroke support group. The group was for both the individuals who experienced strokes as well as their caretakers/family members. I had the blessing of the admin staff to do so. Was it uncomfortable? Yes did I feel out of...
A Strength Stretched too far Becomes a Weakness
Knowing your strengths Do you know your strengths some people do and some people don't. If you do know your strengths, there is something about them. You may not realize and that's the subject of this podcast. Stretching too far Sometimes when we approach a goal or a...
Live Your Life Iteratively
What is an iteration? An iteration is an updated version of something built upon its previous version. But, and iteration can also be another separate version. Examples of iterations When someone bakes a cake, they can create a cake that has chocolate filling, vanilla...
Type A Retirement – the frightening truth
Type A Personalities The phrase type a refers to a pattern of behavior and personality associated with high achievement, competitiveness, and impatience. Does this sound like you? Does this sound like most C-level employees? Does this sound like most entrepreneurs and...
Why white space is vital to communication
White Space The first known use of 'White Space' was back in 1946, and it means the area of a page without writing or pictures. It's the part between the words, the part that allows us to pause and consider. it allows us to compartmentalize one set of thoughts from...
Mentor, teacher, instructor… but is it ‘coach?’
Coach So what is a coach? And what is a life coach? “Life Coach” never really generated positive professional images in my mind, even though I’m considered to be one. It appeared out of nowhere and came with baggage. At least to me. But now it seems that everyone is a...
Taking responsibility for the good in your life.
Three words There are a number of words that can cause an emotional reaction. I won't use the word 'trigger' because that's overused. We're not going to go over all of those words, but we're going to do three of them: fault, responsibility, and ownership—and we're...
Find your core directives and something amazing happens
Passion Everyone talks about passion. For a long time, you were told to follow your passion. I talked about passion in Job, Career or Calling a few years ago. Obviously passions are good as they give us that energy we need, but there are a lot of things we are not...
Bias, internal, external & my eye-opening talk with Google Gemini
Google Gemini Gemini is Google's version of ChatGPT. It's a large language model (LLM) that thinks and responds naturally. You can have conversations, ask for advice, ask it to play a part, and even ask it to generate images. That's where my journey began. I asked it...
UPS – My secret for avoiding depression, being more productive
Down days It's normal for people to have down days, to have times in which they become less than motivated. it's also normal to find yourself without purpose here and there. Sure, you have a purpose—you have good old Maslow's hierarchy of needs to keep you going. Are...
BEFORE you make resolutions listen to this
Did I catch you in time? Every year I tell you not to make resolutions—not because I don't want you to set goals, but because resolutions (at least the style of setting goals) traditionally have a fantastic failure rate. So, before you make them (or if you've made...
AI, Language Models and puppies
AI & ChatGPT* A language model uses a special kind of learning to conduct a 'probability distribution' over words used to predict the most likely next word in a sentence based on the previous entry. Language models learn from text and can be used for producing...
Japanese principles – helping you to fall in love with your job
There are a lot of lists out there for how to obtain happiness, productivity, etc. As you know Alchemy for Life™ is exactly about that too. So, I'd like to not only share some of these principals, but tell you about my real world experience with them as well as what...
There’s no wrong way…
"There's no wrong way to do it..." Have you ever been given that advice? Did it make sense to you? Did it set you at ease? No, me neither. Let me tell you why that is the worst advice you can give someone who is trying to improve their craft, and why you NEVER hear it...
The importance of a catalog
Do you have a catalog? if you call yourself a creative, then it is important to catalog your work. In that, I mean to take a step back and see the various foundations you've built. It's a good idea anyway to take a step back, as many creators have to ask Does This...
Attitude is everything (when consuming media)
Attitude is everything That's one of those phrases we have heard to death and to the point that it's lost any real meaning, hasn't it? If you're like me you might even cringe at it and just wave it off as mind-over-matter kind of nonsense—even if it has made a...
Triangulating Limiting Beliefs
Triangulation Triangulation is the process by which you use more than one location to find the location of something. I point gets distance, two points gets position on the ground, three points gets altitude. That's exactly how GPS works—the more satellites the better...
Thermostats, teaching and experience
Start with awareness As with every episode we start with an awareness. In this case it's an awareness of the fact that we are always gathering knowledge. Thermostats My thermostat tells me the humidity if I walk over to it, but even though I can ask and manipulate the...
A single breeze…
Great storms announce themselves with a single breeze, and a single random spark can ignite the fires of rebellion. Bishop of Aquila - Ladyhawke (1985) A great quote from one of my all-time favorite movies. You may even say it was an influence on The Sword and...
Overcommunicating
Retooling It's been a bit because I've been busy exploring different media avenues. In addition to the podcast I've been exploring video shorts for Youtube, and small digestible video bites for Instagram and Facebook. So, welcome back! And check them out on my...
Become ceremonious
What is ceremony? If you look it up you'll be told it is a "ritual observance or procedure." Most cases refer to weddings, and that's good because that's the example I used in the podcast. Why do I want more in my life? You want more if you're trying to make a habit...
Who do you think you’re talking to?
A reminder on the voices We use three voices to communicate with ourselves AND others. Even if you get that you may not realize that not only can someone’s second voice be speaking to you, but you might be using your second voice to speak...
Self Love and Self Care – Revisited
Most people think of self care and self love as the same thing. It's all about you, being nice to you, doing nice things for you. Right? And it has a bit of stigma attached to it to easily make the average person (especially males) feel, well, just selfish about the...
The holy grail of positivity-bias
The mind’s ability to recall negative experiences is so easy, and the opposite is a struggle, why?
I saw two voices talking!
Three Voices If you've read Three Voices then you know we all have three voices that we all use to communicate with ourselves and others. As a refresher and for those who have not read the book, our first voice is our speaking voice, our second is also regarded as our...
Do you struggle too?
What’s wrong with me? / Intro to this thing My unspoken perception (my first voice*) is as follows. I am not saying this is correct, and in most of this it certainly is not, but here it is. There’s this thing. People who have overcome this have...
2022: Most Helpful Episodes!
Review of our most helpful episodes. From Interviews to a unique take on word meanings, to turning negatives to positives (and maybe vice versa) you don't want to miss this. The Complete AFL Episode Guide: A Catalog of All Our Episodes Welcome to The Complete Alchemy...
Time, Energy and Resources – widgets vs. service!
Shorting yourself on time-based skills You've heard this before right? That as you get better and better at something, you can do it more efficiently. So your skill is just as good as your competitor but you do it faster. great! Except that you charge hourly. So now...
Did you stop measuring?
Measuring We recently talked about measuring, and now we're talking about NOT doing it. Programs running We have many programs running. We are always tasting, listening, looking, sampling... and measuring. Did you stop measuring? "Hi, I'm Mr. Scale! I'm going to...
The tension of disagreement
Tension We've talked about tension before. We've talked about tension vs. something being at rest and what that means for us. But now I want to talk about the tension of disagreement. Everything's going to be OK Everything is going to be OK. Does that relieve you? It...
Taking a step back
A simple answer for a complex issue... doesn't work Did you ever have an issue with someone and tell a friend about it? They usually say "Oh well I would just say this." You roll your eyes , take a deep breath, and attempt to explain that this is pretty complicated,...