Founder & CEO @ Close
I’ve been spending the last few weeks of summer at the beach in Halkidiki and have made a daily ritual of swimming in the ocean each morning. While the water here is typically known to be gentle and serene, it recently has been much more turbulent and unsettled. I’ve had to adjust my swimming technique …
Rather than feeling present and peaceful, I felt fragmented and frustrated in recent weeks. My nights were filled with uneasy sleep and weird dreams. And in the course of the days, I struggled with confounding urges: When I worked, I wanted to take a break. When I took a break, my mind kept thinking about …
This topic is something we’ve touched on previously but it’s a theme that keeps popping up for me. It’s the notion of “you are not above this”. I keep finding myself in situations where a thought or feeling arises that I’m not comfortable with and my first instinct is to reject it. I think to …
There’s a quote by Byron Katie that’s been stuck in my mind. It reads, “Don’t be spiritual, be honest instead. It’s very painful to pretend yourself beyond your true evolution.” I love it because it ties back to this inner work journey I’ve been on of going deeper within my own psyche and emotions and …
I’ve been pondering a quote lately from my favorite Dostoevsky book, The Brothers Karamazov, which reads, “we ought to treat everyone like little children, and most importantly ourselves.” It got me thinking about the way we are with our children – how loving, patient, lighthearted and encouraging we are when we’re parenting these tiny little …
Ever wake up and think of all the things you gotta do, and it just destroys you? I can’t tell you how many times I woke up feeling miserable because of everything I’d have to tackle on that day. In my younger years, it would actually make me cancel everything and fall into a depression. …
Darkness has illuminated my inner world. With nothing to see outside of me, I began to see things clear within: fears I didn’t know I grappled with. My complicated relationship with love. Mysterious light visions. While I shared the physical aspects of my dark retreat experience in episode 144, in this episode I focus on …
I recently attended a dark retreat. I was in complete and utter darkness, alone, for an entire week. It was one of the most intense things I’ve ever done and I haven’t really shared much about it with anyone until now. In this episode, I will share the physical experiences of living in true darkness …
I just spent a week at a darkness retreat – all day and night for an entire week, I was alone in a room in complete darkness. It was a very intense experience – it felt like climbing Mount Everest with your mind. I knew returning to “normal” life after would be an adjustment, particularly …
How much of who you are in this very moment can you fully see and accept? It’s one of the hardest questions that life asks of us every day. In this episode, I discuss the human experience of how different situations bring out feelings that are already deep within us and the courage needed to …
It’s been a very large part of my personality to define my self worth and the value I add to the world through what I’ve accomplished in a day. But I’ve learned that no matter how many to-do items I cross off my list, there’s never a sense of completion. I’m now embracing the art …
There’s a part of me that’s resurfaced recently that I haven’t had to face in months. It’s the part of me that is relentless in downplaying every single thing that I do – the inner voice that’s constantly whispering in my ear “you are not enough”. This feeling is like quicksand; the faster I try …
Where you do your inner work matters. Spiritual trips like retreats, yoga and meditation are vacations. The real inner work is done in the every day life – in your house, with your family and especially with those people in your life who are the most inconvenient. The ones that get under your skin and …
This concept is something we’ve discussed in previous episodes, but there’s more to this idea that I want to dig deeper into. It’s the notion that there are two sides to the same coin – that what we hate about others, we embody within ourselves. In this episode, I share a few different stories and …
“Shut the fuck up and do it anyways” used to be my mantra. I lived my life in such a disciplined, pragmatic way, which was great for producing results but I was so out of touch with my own thoughts and feelings that it was creating a negative impact in my life. I realized there …
You can’t be upset with others and at peace with yourself at the same time. Whatever negative thoughts you observe about someone else or the world around you is a direct projection and reflection of something you’re dealing with within yourself. I’ve been practicing this for years, and yet, it’s still challenging to live this …
I recently had such a stressful dream that when I woke up, the feelings of worry, anxiety and guilt within my dream continued to linger long after I was awake. Typically when I have these little negative thought clouds, I’m able to effortlessly puff them away and return to a sunny state of mind. But …
For the past month I’ve been doing a daily practice of asking myself one specific question multiple times a day. It’s a very simple question and it isn’t some magical, life-changing technique, but it has been extremely illuminating in helping me identify certain patterns in my life. The question is “what is your true intention …
I recently did a five day water fast, with 4 days of juice fasting (2 leading up to and 2 after the water fast). In this episode, I share how I prepared myself for the fast, what I experienced, and what I learned about my relationship with food and life simply by withholding food for …
I’ve spent a good amount of time over the past 2 years working on the anger that I thought I didn’t have. And for the most part, I thought that I was good by now—I felt I had a good relationship with my anger. Until something unexpected happened: I got angry, and I hid it …
Listen to your heart. Get in touch with your body. Trust your intuition. All of these are easier said than done, because they require something from the mind it doesn’t like to do: relinquish control. The mind always wants to run the show, and it won’t hesitate for a moment to pretend to be all …
I recently had an experience where I came close to what I believe enlightenment might feel like. This happened a few days after attending a silent retreat and going on a walk in nature—the intense state of pure love I experienced I’m now playfully going to be referring to as “englowment”. It was a beautifully …
Silence is an essential element of inner work. But in modern life, it’s pretty much as rare as a precious metal. It’s so easy to always be distracted, constantly consuming some kind of information or entertainment, engaging in some activity—we’ve got infinite ways to keep our minds busy. You have to consciously create silence in …
A lot of spiritual practices try to teach you to become something or someone else, achieve a certain state of being. But you don’t need that. Inner work is not about getting to some magical place where everything will be different. It’s about living your own truth. You already are what you need to become. …