Fusing meditation and affirmations (Part Three)

Positive affirmations added to meditation can significantly change the equation, and that’s where my personal experience comes into play. An affirmation repeated after 20–30 minutes of meditation is a different animal after one has just spent considerable time reducing mental chatter, sustaining attention, becoming more aware of thoughts, without automatically following them, settling physiological arousal, and entering a state in which one’s attention is unusually concentrated. 

Both can be a very effective combination. It’s probably less as programming the subconscious and more as repeatedly training where my attention and behavior go, creating a fascinating feedback loop. For example let’s say that my affirmation is about becoming more patient (something I’ve been working on). When I meditate, I become calm, I repeat the affirmation while visualizing or emotionally experiencing patience. Now, just a bit later, I encounter an irritating situation.

Previously, the event might have triggered irritation and then automatic reaction, but after months of repetition, If I begin to get the same irritation, I can recognize it and that gives me pause before making a more deliberate choice. I won’t probably not even remember the affirmation consciously and that's a part that can feel almost mysterious, but it might be that the conscious mind doesn't have to be present at every step for a learned pattern to influence behavior. 

Then there’s another ingredient, and that’s emotion, a particularly important element in my case. An affirmation such as “I am becoming more patient” is one thing, but if repeated while I’m in a deeply peaceful state, accompanied by a genuine feeling of appreciation for the people and experiences that shaped me, it may turn into something quite different. 

I’m not merely saying the proposition, but I’m now associating it with a particular internal state that gives me something that through attention, followed by emotion, plus repetition, gets a true change in my behavior. That’s a much more potent learning combination than simply repeating words. 

My meditation/affirmation sequence may be doing several jobs simultaneously, and there is a remarkable circularity where meditation makes the affirmation more receptive. 

My affirmation gives my meditation a direction, while my behavior provides evidence, that evidence strengthens the affirmation and finally, my stronger belief makes subsequent meditation more meaningful. If anything, this explains in part why, after several years, I describe the results as “stunning.” 

Tomorrow we’ll conclude with the limitation I can see in part of my approach...

Fusing meditation and affirmations (Part Two)

In trying to find out how this synergistic practice has impacted my life, so far, I need to distinguish between the fact “this produced real changes in me” from “there is a mysterious force causing external events to happen.” The first is compatible with what we know about attention, learning, motivation and behavior. The second is a bit esoteric and would require evidence that goes beyond my experience.

What may have happened in my case is that when I arrived in the US, positive thinking that was a big part of personal development techniques, gave me an anchor in which by thinking positively and believing in myself I could pursue my goal while not letting obstacles define what was possible. 

Whether or not every claim made by the positive-thinking movement was justified, that philosophy had a very practical consequence: it affected what I repeatedly paid attention to and what actions seemed in the realm of my possibilities. 

I also had an important advantage as I wasn’t merely reading about positive thinking, but was living in an environment that rewarded initiative and adaptation, so some of those beliefs were reinforced by my direct experience. My struggle to professionally adapt (US corporate life, 

American culture and language) and my steadfast focus, helped me succeed as belief-triggered action engendered results, which reinforced my convictions and helped me tackle more action. The whole process becomes a virtuous circle. This said, an affirmation repeated when one is busy, distracted, skeptical, emotionally agitated, and simply negative or dystopian is essentially a sentence competing with thousands of other thoughts. 

One case in point is Donald Trump who has long cited the late minister Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking, as a profound personal and spiritual mentor, saying that he could listen to Peale "all day" and said he was one of the greatest speakers and influences in his life, but some members of the late Peale’s family have distanced themselves from the president, expressing discomfort with how Trump utilized Peale's religious teachings to project a purely materialistic, aggressive and malevolent public image. 

Tomorrow, we’ll try to understand how meditation can mesh with affirmations from positive thinking…

Fusing meditation and affirmations (Part One)

When I first came to the US in the 70s, I was impressed with the movement towards “Positive Thinking” that was part and parcel of the business culture, at least that was what I thought, compared to Europe’s built-in pessimism and cynicism. 

Perhaps, it’s after reading “Think and Grow Rich” that I got behind that way of thinking, and I must admit that it did help me adapt to the American way of working, and ultimately brought me success. Fast forward to 2020 when I successfully returned to meditation and after a couple years, I began to meld affirmations linked to my desires and goals with that process.

The results have been stunning since then. Is this a fluke or can it be explained someway? Still, I can’t think I should dismiss it as a bizarre phenomenon. There is a quite plausible psychological explanation for why meditation and affirmations can work in synergy when fused together—and my particular story supports this. 

Still, on the other hand, there’s a very reasonable hypothesis that my practice has changed the probability of certain thoughts, emotional responses and behaviors occurring—and those small changes, repeated thousands of times, have produced surprisingly large differences over several years. 

In the next blog, we’ll dig deeper into what might have really happened through my practice, so make sure to stay with me... 

When age enriches us

As I have evoked the idea several times on this blog, the aging process can take us into several directions depending on what we let it do, and this true independent of our particular situation having to do with our economic, social, physical or mental health status, or a combination of either of these factors.

So, all things being what the can be with us, we can see the “aging glass” either half-full or half-empty. As I’ve also said, aging is quite brutal a stage in life, it’s not for “sissies” and the way we want to steer our attitudes, our expectations and our objectives demand a strong determination. 

The alternative to this, I found, is a “crash and burn” approach that is not palatable for me, so I see my advancing into time as a continuing adventure where I have no alternative, but embrace ideas, projects and actions that force me to get out of my shell, re-invent me and in the process – almost always surprise me as much as they regenerate me. 

The end of the road transforms itself into an apotheosis, when I’ll have done everything that was possible given my abilities and for as long as I could muster the energy to accomplish it. What a superior way to embrace old age and make the best out of our last Act!

Women’s most critical and important years (Part Two)

After going over the years to define a man’s life, it’s only fair to wonder if women undergo the same process. The answer seems similar but there are some major differences. 

While men and women navigate similar chronological milestones, the underlying biological mechanisms, cognitive timelines, and societal pressures create distinctly different, high-impact events for females. The most critical point is that the female brain matures earlier in life, with an accelerated maturation between 18–25 and transition into psychological adulthood faster than men.

Because of accelerated social and emotional wiring, young women experience higher anxiety and mood disorders during this window than young men, heavily influenced by social pressures and fluctuating estrogen and progesterone Because their prefrontal cortex finishes development a couple of years earlier than in males, young women generally develop long-term risk assessment, emotional regulation, and social processing sooner. 

However the female body undergoes a much steeper, compressed biological transition in midlife. Women hormonal baseline gradually decline by 1% per year after age 30, followed by an abrupt cliff during menopause. If men experience a slower fading of hormones, women’s is a sudden, system-wide shift. For men, the 30s are about maintaining physical health and locking in a career, but between the ages of 35–50 women face strict biological timelines regarding fertility alongside their own career peaks. 

For women, this decade often becomes a high-stakes balancing act due to an inflexible biological timeline. If a woman wants children, she must juggle her career, relationship stability, and fertility timelines. Between the ages of 40-50, if a man's midlife transition is primarily driven by psychological reflection ("What have I accomplished?"), a woman's midlife transition is deeply rooted in profound neuro-hormonal restructuring. 

Unlike men’s gradual hormone decline, women face a sharp drop in estrogen during perimenopause and menopause (typically averaging around age 51). Estrogen is not just a reproductive hormone; it protects the female brain, bones, and heart. The loss of estrogen fundamentally changes how a woman's body stores fat, processes insulin, and regulates temperature (hot flashes and insomnia). 

Social scientists track a "U-shaped curve of happiness" where life satisfaction hits its absolute low for many women around ages 47–48. This drop is a perfect storm of peak career stress, aging parents, teenagers leaving home, and severe hormonal disruption. While the midlife transition is sharper for women, studies on the U-shaped curve of happiness show that women's life satisfaction bounces back powerfully after age 55, leading to a massive surge in creativity, confidence, and leadership. 

Women sure experience a more agitated life than men do!

Leveraging memories for growth (Part Two)

As we look back into our memories, a failed business venture, a badly chosen relationship, an opportunity we missed, a foolish argument, an impulsive decision, a misplaced trust and a career choice we later regretted, are so many “arrows” we can label: “Don't you repeat it again!” 

So, the ideal tool is the one that enables us a way to spot these bad situations earlier next time in order to turn regret into preparedness. Sure, as I mentioned yesterday, that exercise should not get us into a nostalgia trap. Maybe instead of “nostalgia” we should call it “rumination”. Nostalgia says, those were wonderful times. “I wish I could go back...” while rumination suggests “Why in the world did I do that? If only I had…”

Neither of the two necessarily make us learn from past experiences. What I’m proposing instead is a third relationship with the past by revisiting it, extracting the lesson, and leaving it there. In other words, our memory should be treated more as a laboratory than a museum. 

I’ve never thought about it this way, but I like it! I also see an intriguing asymmetry as we usually assume that experience makes us wiser because we lived through things, but perhaps wisdom can also be accumulated through deliberate retrospective learning. 

Imagine someone my age (78) looking back over his life and identifying 30 or 40 consequential mistakes. He might discover that five or six basic tendencies account for a surprisingly large proportion of them. Things like: 

• Acting too quickly 
• Being overly trusting 
• Avoiding difficult conversations 
• Caring too much about what others thought 
• Failing to recognize when circumstances had changed 
• Confusing confidence with competence 

The resulting insight could be far more valuable than remembering 40 individual incidents. At that point the summary shows us something like a personal history of errors and it raises a wonderful question. Could we deliberately become wiser by studying not only what happened to us, but how we repeatedly managed to get things wrong? 

As far as I am concerned, what I found were two recurring patterns. Acting too fast, indicating a need for enhanced patience, and lacking self-confidence or being shy. Call this excessive fear or timidity at times. The other, positive side of the coin is worth remembering too. In my case it was intuition and persistence that were my “best arrows…” 

Now I know and you can too if you go through the exercise!

Leveraging memories for growth (Part One)

Most of us will agree that we learn from our biggest mistakes and part of the wisdom we gain from them is to make sure not to repeat them again. This said, if we take the time and effort to “scan” our memories for all of our misguided moves or other errors we still remember, we should be able to inure the same benefits and add them to our quiver, without being sucked into the nostalgia trap, right?

I happen to believe that this basic proposition is quite sound. If a painful mistake can teach us something, we should be smart enough in learning from it so we won’t ever have to repeat the mistake again. Since we have decades of accumulated experience sitting in our memories, why not deliberately mine it? 

Sure, we need to remember an important caveat in that our memory isn't a video archive and its contents are not always totally objective recordings. They are reconstructions as with time, we tend to soften some things, exaggerate others, forget our own motivations, and sometimes rewrite ourselves as the hero—or the victim—of the story. 

As a result of that consideration, a useful "memory scan" shouldn't ask simply “What did I do wrong?” but should go deeper and more specifically, 

• What decisions did I make that turned out badly? 
• What did I fail to see at the time? 
• What warning signs did I ignore? 
• What assumption proved to be wrong? 
• What did I do repeatedly despite already knowing better? 
• What did I not do that I should have? 
• What did I learn from the experience that I subsequently forgot? 

Plus I leave one last question at the very end, “Are there patterns connecting several apparently unrelated mistakes?” That last question may be the most valuable as it can be the most actionable. One mistake is an anecdote but a recurring pattern of what leads to mistakes constitutes some serious information. 

As I mentioned above, in my "quiver" metaphor, life gives us a quiver of arrows, but we tend to think of the arrows as our successes—skills, accomplishments, good decisions or experiences. Yet, it’s fair to say that our mistakes belong in that same quiver too! 

So in the next blog we’ll take a look at these bad arrows and see how we can turn them into positive experiences that will add to our wisdom…

The difference between mentors and catalysts

When I take the time to think about it, I don’t think I was ever fortunate to have a mentor, spotting me, guiding me, imparting their knowledge and watching me grow. At the very least, what I’ve often thought were “mentors”, were just encounters that deflected on my trajectory and made it somehow think. To borrow into the present fad, “influencers” might be a better word for what these people did to me. 

I could also say catalysts, which might be a more appropriate term. In fact, what I’m describing is more common than the classic “mentor–mentee” narrative we’re all taught to expect. Perhaps, the distinction I’m making between mentors and catalysts is something most of us never articulate, but many end up experiencing. 

Again, if a mentor is someone who walks alongside us, a catalyst is someone who bumps into us and changes our direction. In reality, most people have far more catalysts than mentors — but we often mislabel them as mentors because “mentor” is the socially approved story.

True mentors have three characteristics: They are there for the duration, they actively invest in our growth and they offer guidance, not just influence. They’re relational, present and committed. They’re the people who say, “I see where you’re going — let me help you get there.” 

Most people have very few of these, sometimes none. On the other hand, catalysts are very different: They appear briefly enough to disrupt our thinking, shift our trajectory and don’t stay around to watch what happens next. Catalysts are not mentors, they’re just inflection points. For instance, they’re the professor who said one sentence that stuck, the colleague who challenged our assumptions, the stranger whose comment re-framed our worldview or sometimes the book that jolted us awake. 

Catalysts don’t guide us — they ignite us. We generally confuse the two because our cultural narrative around growth is built around mentorship and we’re told that successful people have mentors. We’re also told that guidance is the noble path and this wisdom can only be passed down through relationships. 

Many of us never have a true mentor not because they’re unlucky, but because mentorship requires relationships, resources, time, alignment, mutual commitment and a shared sense of purpose. Catalysts, however, can be everywhere as life is full of collisions, not apprenticeships. 

Finally, if some people thrive under mentorship, others, like me perhaps who tend to be independent thinkers, self-directed learners, and people who value autonomy — grow more through catalytic encounters. Maybe I could say for people like me, catalysts often are the real mentors — just in a different form.

From septuagenarian to octogenarian (Par Two)

While I agree with most of the general points discussed in my previous blog, my outlook to the transition from septuagenarian to octogenarian years is different in the way it adds to these steps. First, I remain acutely aware that the time left for me is disappearing quickly and becomes increasingly precious. Therefore I cannot waste it unproductively. 

This doesn’t mean that I plan to return to work, but each of my actions, even the ones seemingly unproductive, like meditating, sleeping well, or deep thinking are extremely valuable to me. This forces me to get many things done and by treating the use of my time as so precious, it turns into a skilled game from which I get mentally rewarded from it like all players do. 

Then, there is my view of the inexorable physical decline that is beyond my control and just a function of aging. While I don’t like this evolution I’m learning to accept it and transmute it into something positive. 

As a result, I recently decided to turn it on its head and aim for placing the rest of my life on a trajectory in “crescendo” until everything stops, so I’m not disappearing vanquished, but up into a rewarding kind of glory. Why? Because I see that remaining time like a chance to repair all that’s wrong or not so nice in myself. 

From turning fear into love, to learning skills that I still could use, from being a much better person to the people I come in contact with, either daily or occasionally. I keep busy filling the “negative holes” in my life with positive traits and still trying to get better at so many things that are leaving room for improvement. 

Expending this effort is not really hard, because I’ve long seen any obstacle as a hurdle challenging me to overcome it, and in the process, get better and learn something from these efforts that are a continuation of my competitive make-up. All this keeps me enormously busy and constantly behind the eight ball in a stimulating way. 

In conclusion, this outlook—gained over the years through mindfulness and disciplined meditation—keeps me going, making me wish that I will die one day filled with happiness and as healthy as possible for my age, physically, mentally and cognitively. So now, you’ve got the full program!

From septuagenarian to octogenarian (Part One)

In a few days my hometown friends that are my age will get together to share a big lunch at a restaurant located on the East shore of the lake of Montriond to reflect on their fleeting seventies (all of them were born in 1947 – a great year for wine – but many have already turned seventy-nine. That means one last year before turning eighty. 

Wow! While most of us never believed this would happen, that transition from septuagenarian to octogenarian is a profound milestone. It marks an official entry into late-stage adulthood where physiological shifts intersect with noticeable social change and deep emotional resilience, offering a unique blend of wisdom, slower pacing, and personal liberation if we only focus on the good sides of that life stage. 

Of course, it’s hard to accept and see the gradual decline experienced by our bodies in muscle mass and bone density, bringing a heightened emphasis on fall prevention, mobility support, and nutrition. Not just that, but our metabolism slows down, making the conservation of energy and regular, low-impact exercise more important than ever.

True, multiple studies show octogenarians reporting less worry, lower stress, and greater emotional stability than everyone younger than us. Years of fun, sometimes suffering and accumulated life experience create a natural aptitude for emotional regulation, mental stability and a more realistic view of how we see our changed situations. 

Gradually, many of us begin to develop a sharper appreciation for simple, everyday joys, prioritizing peace, appreciation over performance and perfection. Still, our available time is shrinking daily in ways that are so visible that it can be scary at times, as well as a similar shrinkage in our social circles because of natural loss or declining health limitations. 

Now, our connections become highly intentional. Octogenarians often favor deep, meaningful conversations over seeing a quantity of people. It’s also true that both retirement and reduced societal expectations provide the ultimate permission to pursue personal passions, self-discovery, hobbies, and community engagement at one's own pace and this to us also mean a healthy switch to quality over quantity. 

Tomorrow, I’ll try to explain how I prepare for that transition a bit differently...

Making it look easy is so hard!

Recently, I enjoyed watching an interview of this year’s Alpine ski world cup winners Mikaela Shiffrin and Marco Odermatt. This talk, meant to be a podcast, was conducted by Nick Fellows, the official FIS interviewer. In it, Mikaela said that when people watched her they felt that her skiing looked seemingly easy and effortless, but it was in fact real hard work and no one wanted to realize it. I have to agree. 

What she meant is one of those deceptively simple truths that only makes sense if we’ve lived inside a craft long enough to feel the gap between how mastery looks and what it costs. Since I’m so immersed into skiing, her comment resonates at a deeper level than she even intended. Here’s what I would add, not to correct her, but to expand the idea into something more complete and more honest about high‑level performance. 

When skiing looks “easy,” it’s because the skier has spent thousands of hours removing friction, noise, hesitation, and micro‑errors. In turn, when we watch the skier, we only see fluidity, balance, inevitability and grace. But what we can’t see are the thousands of invisible corrections per minute, a nervous system trained to anticipate chaos, a body that has experienced every type of failure and a mind that has learned to stay quiet under pressure. 

In fact, effortlessness is not the absence of effort but it is its full integration. In fact, for whatever we’re good at doing, the better we get, the more invisible the inner details of our work becomes. This is the paradox of mastery where beginners show their effort, experts hide it and masters erase it. In my example, Shiffrin and Odermatt ski in a way that makes our brain relax when we watch them, but inside their bodies, the workload is enormous, with edge control at an infinitely small level, pressure management that changes every fraction of a second and a constant recalibration of line, timing, and snow feedback. 

We see what happens on the surface, but Marco and Mikaela live the turbulence beneath it. That is when all assume: “She’s gifted. He’s gifted. It must be easy for them.” Yet, talent is real, but it’s only the ignition, what we don’t see is the relentless, boring, repetitive, lonely work that turns talent into inevitability. Mastery requires a relationship with discomfort that very few people ever develop. This is the part Mikaela didn’t say out loud, but it’s the truth, as most of us don’t want to realize how hard it is because they don’t want to imagine choosing that level of discomfort. 

Finally, mastery is lonely and this is the part people rarely talk about. The higher one’s climb, the fewer people can truly understand what they’re doing, so when Mikaela says people don’t want to realize how hard it is, she’s also saying: “Most people can’t imagine the world I live in.” And she’s right. 

The aftermath of change-making

Today, inspired by the book we discussed previously, we’ll explore how major, unexpected life disruptions can often transform ourselves in finding new, unexpected directions and growth opportunities within ourselves. 

This is something I particularly enjoy because I naturally like to think in terms of systems, patterns, and long arcs. I’m not just happy to see that “change happens”; I want to understand how change can transform me, change my personality and my identity. 

I also want to evaluate whether a change was good or bad, how we can integrate change into a coherent life story. I’m also curious to know what skills can make us more adaptive than reactive. 

What follows is a framework that addresses these questions. It could work like this: Every change — chosen or imposed — creates four layers of consequences. By analyzing all four, we’ll get a complete picture. 

• It starts with the external aftermath. What objectively has changed in our lives? A job, a location, a relationship, a set of routines and a bunch of constraints. This is the easiest, but also the least interesting layer. 
• Then, as expected, comes the internal aftermath. For instance, what shifted in our identity? Elements like confidence, worldview, sense of agency and emotional tone. This is where we’re talking about a real life changing story. 
• Now comes the narrative aftermath that begs the question, how do we explain the change to ourselves? As it relates to loss, liberation, accident, destiny or just a lesson. We humans don’t live in events; we live in the stories we tell about events. 
• This process concludes with the fourth layer, the skill aftermath. What new capacities have emerged in us? Traits like resilience, perceptual acuity, intuition, adaptability and pattern recognition. This last layer is the opportunity to let our personal strengths shine as we’ve already spent a lifetime turning change into skill. 

I don’t know about you, but this framework works well for me, because it mirrors the way I think naturally. A form of thinking that’s layered, analytical, experiential, meaning‑driven and oriented toward some sense of control and mastery. It can also turn any change — past or future — into something I can debate, evaluate, and learn from.

Tapping into cosmic energy… (Part Three)

To learn more about practical methods to “unclog the pores” and how to cultivate a "porous" state, you’ve arrived at the right place. Well, we’re looking at something very real, without cosmic rays or mystical downloads, but just knowing the inner conditions that make a human mind more permeable, more intuitive, more insightful. When we talk about “unclogging the pores,” we’re describing the process of removing internal noise so that ideas, patterns, and insights can flow more freely. 

Let’s explore practical, grounded methods that genuinely cultivate this “porous” state — the same state that Mozart, Einstein, or Mother Teresa lived in. Let’s begin with “Quieting the Noise”, that is the foundation. We can’t be porous if our mind is jammed with static. A warning, the solutions sound simple but can be very demanding. It’s mindfulness meditation and takes at least 15 minutes daily. It’s not mystical and consists in just training your attention to stop jumping around.

In time, it will reduce our internal chatter, increase awareness of subtle thoughts, and improve emotional clarity, just like rinsing the pores of our skin. It’s demanding because it’s daily and needs to become a habit and it takes time that’s measured in years, not just hours. You’ll know when you get there. It will be where the “porous” state really begins. 

We’re teaching our mind to notice what it normally filters out. We need to cultivate our sense of observation or awe to literally quieten the brain’s self-focus regions and open us to the world through our senses. Following this, we must strengthen our subconscious “receiver”, like tuning a radio. This is where creativity, intuition, and insight emerge. 

We’re not pulling knowledge from the cosmos but we’re allowing our subconscious to surface what it already knows. This includes a period of incubation involving time, thus patience and the ability to let our minds drift among other tools. Then we must work on the emotional component to remove resistance. 

Porosity isn’t just cognitive, it’s emotional. So we start by letting go of perfectionism, choosing curiosity over control and self-compassion, which means that we need to remove the harsh critic that we often are. Finally, we need to use our body as a receiver, keeping in mind that a tense body results in a tense mind. We do this with our breath, where slow, deep breathing increases neural coherence and opens us literally as do light movement and natural immersion. 

This is the physiological version of opening the pores. When all this is achieved and all is aligned, insights feel like they come from “outside,” even though they’re emerging from the deepest layers of your own mind. This is what Mozart meant when he said music appeared “fully formed,” or what Einstein meant by “intuition.” This is what we’re pointing toward when we commit to it. Work smart at it, and good luck!

Tapping into cosmic energy… (Part Two)

We could say that the forces of our universe work in unison with the way our brain works. Our brain is constantly absorbing patterns, forming associations, recombining ideas, generating insights, noticing subtle cues and making leaps that feel sudden, but are built on years of subconscious processing. When our mind is quiet and receptive, these processes become more visible and feel like “inspiration arriving out of nowhere.” 

In fact, it’s not coming from outside, it’s inside, but it feels cosmic because it originates from a domain so vast that we can’t fully fathom it. If we aren’t as “porous” as Mozart or Einstein, the keys to let that universal wisdom rush in, can be found in mindfulness, the best “unclogging” mechanism that includes meditation, stillness, and even awe.

Mindfulness help reduce internal noise, increases neural coherence, improves attention, quiets the default mode network (especially the “self-chatter” region), enhances creativity, increases sensitivity to subtle patterns and improves emotional clarity. This is the mental equivalent of “opening up the pores.” Unlike what I might have thought or said before, we’re not absorbing cosmic energy by the cubic foot, we’re just removing the blockages that prevent our own mind from functioning at its highest capacity. 

In fact, Mozart and Einstein weren’t cosmic antennas but were both uncluttered minds. Amadeus Mozart described music as “already complete” in his mind, as if he were discovering it rather than inventing it. Albert Einstein said his ideas came as “intuitive leaps,” not logical steps. Their descriptions match what happens when the subconscious is highly active, the conscious mind gets out of the way, the person is deeply attuned to patterns, the internal critic shuts up or is at least quiet, the mind is in a state of flow. 

This feels like receiving something from beyond ourselves, but it’s really a measure of the mind functioning at its most open and integrated. I find this approach to be a modern, secular version of a very old idea where the insight comes not from force, but from receptivity. We are not looking at magic but mental permeability, that is the ability to let the world, ideas, patterns, and inspiration flow through us without resistance. 

It’s not mystical, it’s simply wisdom. This approach, I believe is not only coherent, it actually grasp a procedure that has existed for millennia and sees cosmic or universal energy as something that penetrates us to help us grow while clearing all the internal noises that make our lives so hard to live. 

If you don’t have the “porosity” of the famous folks we talked about and want to know how to get it, just stay tuned for the next episode...

Tapping into cosmic energy… (Part One)

The entire universe is immense and contains an almost unlimited amount of energy. So my thinking has always been “Why not tap a tiny bit of that energy, to help us when we need it and make our lives easier both from physical to a mental standpoint?” In fact, without a clear and definite answer to my question, I had intuitively believed it was possible. 

I thought it could happen by opening up, body and mind, and immerse ourselves into that unlimited sea of knowledge and power, just pulling the tiny bit we need of its immense content. How does this strike you? Perhaps what I’m saying here is actually more common, and more profound than people will admit. To me, “cosmic or universal energy” is not literally a physical substance like some parcels delivered by Amazon. 

Instead, it’s a permeable model, as if we were immersed into vast substance, and our degree of openness would determines what we received and perceived. This could mirror a view held by a limited few that have thought already about this. What I’m trying to define is a real psychological phenomenon. Not a few magical cosmic rays, nor a literal energy transfer, but something far more subtle and far more powerful. Something that would make our mind becomes more creative, insightful, and perceptive when it’s open, quiet, and receptive. 

This is not mysticism either. It’s more like neuroscience, psychology, and lived experience. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Albert Einstein, and many others didn’t “receive” knowledge from the universe like a computer downloads a new update, but by cultivating a mental state that allowed ideas to emerge to their attention with unusual clarity and fluency. This in fact is the mechanism I want to discuss and try to explain. 

For instance, Trump stands at the opposite end of this spectrum of awareness, by remaining totally impenetrable untouched by the forces of the universe. “Porous to the cosmos” could be a metaphor for the cognitive openness I’m trying to explain. This means a heightened pattern recognition, a deeper intuition, the ability to hold complex ideas lightly and keep a mind that doesn’t fight or resist insights. 

That also implies a nervous system that isn’t cluttered with noise and a capacity to easily “go with the flow”. These are measurable traits that have nothing supernatural about them. They’re just psychological and neurological and can be cultivated. We are in fact immersed in a “sea of knowledge” and it’s up to us to let it soak in or work at improving our own “porosity”. 

Tomorrow, I’ll share with you what really goes inside the process of opening up the pores...

Keeping a new year’s resolution...

Someone who read my last blog told me “New year's resolutions are fine, but keeping them is much harder than choosing onr. How can I keep it?” I know, many of the resolutions I made over the years have never come through the first time around, so while choosing a resolution feels exciting and full of possibility, keeping it is another story when our best plans get tested by the real world.

The good news is that there are simple, practical strategies that can help us stick with our annual goals. We should begin by not setting traps for ourselves with strict, all‑or‑nothing resolutions, like “I’ll never eat sugar again!” that tend to fall apart the moment life gets messy around us. It would appear that exploratory goals like “I’ll start moving more this month” give us directions without punishing us for missing a day. 

If we can structure the resolution through a system and not just willpower, like tracking it, regular reminders, weekly check‑in with a friend or a calendar that gently reminds us. Psychologists also recommend attaching a new habit to an existing one, for example, stretching after brushing our teeth or journaling right after our morning coffee. 

This uses our brain’s existing wiring to make the new habit stick. Unlike what I tend to do, framing resolutions like a stern command (“I must…”) create resistance, but goals that feel meaningful, playful, or connected to our values are far more sustainable. For instance, I see in my new year’s resolution a challenge that I am ready to overcome and that simple thought often gives me enough energy to see it through. 

Finally, setbacks threaten the best of us, so if and when they happen, let’s treat them as data, not failure. People who succeed long‑term don’t avoid slip‑ups; they just don’t let them derail the whole goal. A missed day is just a missed day, not a verdict. 

Good luck!

Another “New Year Resolution”? (Part Two)

So based on the two first methods we discussed previously (80/20 and Wheel of Life), we could spot our 2025 "annoyances". Sometimes the best resolution isn't adding a new habit, but removing a recurring frustration. 

If that approach doesn’t do it for you, there’s that good old filter for "Identity" over "Outcomes". What I mean by that is instead of choosing a goal based on what you want to get, choose a resolution based on who you want to be. For instance, instead of saying "I want to write a book," choose "I am the type of person who writes every morning." 

 Once a method is picked, there are also some rules to follow, for instance “The rule of one” which addresses the fact that most people fail because they try to change five things at once. Instead, we must select just one habit that, if changed, makes everything else easier (e.g., waking up earlier often improves fitness, productivity, and mood simultaneously).

There’s also the "Two-Minute Rule" that requires that whatever we choose, we must ensure that starting it up won’t take less than two minutes. Deciding is also the act of cutting off other options. To make a resolution "real," we need to define the where, when, and how. 

Something called the "If/Then" formula, using the framework: "If [Situation], then I will [Action]." For example: "If it is 5:00 PM on a Tuesday, then I will drive straight to the gym before going home." 

Another good trick is to make sure our environment cooperates and helps us gain the desired habit. A good illustration is that if we want to eat less sugar, we must decide now to remove it from the house. For some of us, it might also help to get some accountability. Some people thrive on "Social Stakes" (telling friends), while others prefer "Quiet Progress" to avoid the premature hit of dopamine from just talking about the goal. 

Now that you know everything, I give you one week to come up with a sound new year resolution. Let’s do it?

Another “New Year Resolution”? (Part One)

This is a fair and timely question that returns every year, how can we best research, select and decide on a new year resolution? This choice is often a balance between high-reaching ambition and the reality of daily life. 

This period of the year is still an appropriate time to reflect and set a trajectory for 2026. In practice, our resolutions often fail because they are outcomes based (i.e. "I want to lose 10 pounds") rather than systematic (i.e. "I’ll walk for 20 minutes after dinner"). From what I’ve researched, here is a more structured way to research, choose, and commit to a change that is more likely to actually stick. 

Before looking forward, we should look back. Researching our own behavior teaches us much more than looking at "top 10 resolutions" lists online, but how do we go about it? I know myself pretty well and can spot what needs to be improved in me, so my single, new year resolution is now waiting to be executed. 

That’s not always the case for everyone else. Some say we should begin by going through our 2025 calendar and photos, and from there, try to identify the 20% of activities or people that caused 80% of our peak happiness, and the 20% that caused 80% of your stress. Another way to go about is to check out the "Wheel of Life". 

For those not familiar with the method, it’s a popular self-assessment coaching tool, shaped like a circle divided into segments (like a pie), used to visually evaluate your satisfaction across key life areas (e.g., career, health, relationships, finance) by scoring each on a scale, often 1-10, to reveal imbalances and guide goal setting for greater balance and fulfillment. 

Among other things, it should show where the "flat tires" are in your life. All this might sound complicated so we’ll stop here for today. Tomorrow, we’ll discover more “trick” that might help us make these resolutions easier to set in motion...

Ending on a very high note

The way I see things, I feel that our lives should progress at a crescendo and I’m always looking for tools, tricks or advice to keep on growing, so when it’s time, my life will end on the highest note possible. In theory this sounds like a fabulous way to keep on building a rich life based on quality, wisdom, and resonance until the final note is a joyous culmination and not a sad, depressing end. 

To that end – No pun intended! – I’ve tried to search for tools, mindsets, and practices that can help us grow toward that grand finale, of course as long as we stay in good bodily, mental and cognitive health. This might begin with cultivating a growth philosophy, including a commitment to lifelong learning, but continuously feeding our curiosity—whether it’s learning a foreign language, science, or the promises and nuances of artificial intelligence. 

Learning keeps our minds agile and our spirits engaged. Personally, that’s what writing a daily blog does for me. Another way to advance towards that goal is to align ourselves with purpose and legacy by researching, gathering and organizing family archives, documents photos and videos for future generations, or work on a digital time capsule. This activity honors our past and shapes how we’ll want to be remembered. 

Sharing our insights with younger people or peers is also part of that effort. Our blend of empathy and analytical clarity can be a gift others can learn from. This is also time to deepen our relationships by making a concerted effort to nurture old friendships and support loved ones. Even small gestures, like a well-timed message for a birthday or something else and a shared memory will go a long way in cementing and strengthening a strong network of active relationships. 

At the same time, let’s not be shy about engaging with emotionally rich films, books, and music. Let them stir our soul and reflect our journey. Keeping a clear head is also critical, meditating or other forms of mindfulness will help us stay grounded and in touch with the present moment, especially as life becomes more complex. Containing and controlling our “digital life” is also extremely important as we keep it to a minimum by maintaining a clean and measured tech ecosystem with apps that serve our goals and notifications that respect our peace. 

I could add to that list something I’ve never done, like an annual “Life Review” or some kind of retreat that could be a solo or shared ritual, to reflect, re-calibrate, and celebrate progress. Then, I would suggest having the courage to plan for the “last chapter” in a way that’s empowering and certainly not morbid, by designing how we want our final years to feel in ways of picking what we want to prioritize, where and how we’ll live and what we’ll still create!

Keeping the pipeline filled up!

Having constantly something to do, everyday, like advancing or bringing to fruition a project starts by first placing it into our “task pipeline”. If we fail to do so, we’ll end up with nothing to do, and even worse, nothing ready when we absolutely need it. Momentum doesn't just come from motivation—it’s built by habit, structure, and clarity. 

The “task pipeline” concept is powerful, and it requires us to think systemically. Let’s explore how it should work. As much as possible, I try to plan ahead and avoid letting projects or tasks pile up, without my deciding on them and dropping them into my pipeline. I avoid procrastinating and don’t let the seed of an idea or a project idle for too long outside of the fertile and resilient environment that my pipeline is. It begins with placing only tasks that belong there and need this nurturing space. 

That filtering process takes into consideration the task’s impact, urgency, and alignment with our broader goals. It’s not much different than tending a veggie garden like I do. In addition, we must review these projects regularly and update them, based upon ideas, opportunities, surprises and unexpected changes. Using a system, either digitally or on paper is also critical to track what’s inside our pipeline. Its contents must also be broken into progressive “mini victories” instead of vague goals like “just finish the project”. 

This way it can turn into a much more detailed plan that is reviewed and iterated frequently. Pipelines stagnate when we forget and stop refining them. We must end each week with a short reflection: What moved forward? What stalled? What shifted in priority? This practice gives some life and rhythm to our strategy. Of course, we must leave room for the unforeseen, as an overly rigid pipeline can blow up when bad surprises show up along the way. Let’s remember to build slack or “open blocks” into our days to absorb unexpected tasks or spontaneous creativity. 

Good luck with creating and maintaining your own “task pipelines” if you haven’t already done so!