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What are your earliest memories of receiving mail?

A few magical ones come to mind for me.

I got occasional greeting cards from great aunts and relatives who lived far away. The sentiment wasn’t as important as whether or not cash fell out when I opened the card. Still, it was always a thrill to see mail addressed specifically to me. Sometimes it would be addressed to “Master Jason Kotecki,” which always put a little extra pep in my step.

The most exciting times were when the reward showed up for sending in four UPC labels, carefully extracted from cereal boxes, along with a dollar to cover shipping & handling. That’s how I earned my Emperor Palpatine Star Wars action figure. I couldn’t have been more excited if Ed McMahon showed up at the door with one of his oversized checks. 

But there was something about the regular cadence of receiving the latest issue of Sports Illustrated. I got my subscription when I was about thirteen. I was obsessed with sports, fueled in part by the rise of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. 

It came once a week — I feel like it was on Thursdays? — and I remember the anticipation I felt at school, looking forward to coming home and opening the mailbox. Who would be on the cover? What would be “This Week’s Sign That The Apocalypse Is Upon Us?” (If you know, you know.) I’d leap from the school bus and run to the mailbox. And there it was, a week’s worth of sports news, photos, columns, and “Faces in the Crowd” in full-color glory. I’d shut myself up in my bedroom to pore over each page. One of the photos usually became the catalyst for my next drawing. Just as I made it through the final and least interesting articles, it was time to start anticipating the new issue on its way. 

It was my weekly escape from the stress and anxieties of adolescence. 

I’ve had several magazine subscriptions over the years, but sadly, many of them have been shuttered — including Sports Illustrated — thanks to the arrival of the Digital Age. I currently subscribe to an art magazine, and even at fifty, I still get a twinge of excitement when I see it show up in my mailbox.

Because now, of course, the mail is nowhere near as fun. It’s nothing but bills and postcards urging me to upgrade my windows. 

One thing that hasn’t changed is the magic of receiving something meaningful in the mail, especially given how rarely it occurs.

I’m happy to share that the electricity of anticipation and heartfelt human connection is making a comeback. Stay tuned for an announcement next week about a new thing we’re launching to bring a little merriment to your mailbox. (Join us for the virtual ice cream social on Tuesday to get a sneak peek!)

For now, I just want to steer your attention to the amazing opportunity at your fingertips.

My friend Jason recently wrote about the power of writing notes. Not just how wonderful they are to receive, but also how good they make the writer feel, too.

During the pandemic, Kim and I learned about “Helen Mail.” This is what the friends of a woman named Helen called the correspondence they received from her. Because it wasn’t just mail. It wasn’t just a nice handwritten note. It was an experience. The envelope and its contents were plastered with stickers and doodles and an avalanche of whimsy. 

Even though stamps don’t cost what they used to, I stand by the fact that they really are tiny miracles. I challenge you to think of one person you can send some mail to this week. It doesn’t have to outdo Helen Mail. It only has to be from the heart. 

Is there a mentor of yours who might like to hear about a recent accomplishment they deserve some credit for?

Is there a friend you haven’t seen in ages that might appreciate hearing about something that made you think of them?

Is there a young person in your life who could use a word of encouragement and ten bucks? 

Sure, you could easily do this by text or a message on social media. 

But that’s not quite the same as the impact made when you take a few moments of your day to drop something meaningful in the mail.

That delivers a different kind of message.

That, my friend, is where magic lives.

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☕ Who is someone you know that deserves a little mailbox magic this week?

What’s something you love to do?

Maybe it’s traveling with your family. Making something with your own two hands. Or a weekly meeting with a friend to discuss the ups and downs of life over a cup of coffee.

How many trips do you have left? How many projects will you finish? How many more conversations will you have?

As for me, I love making art. I’m fifty years old. Young by some standards, ancient by others. I wonder, how many paintings are left in me?

Will I get them all out?

Fifty years is more than enough time to have discovered what cards I’ve been dealt, and which ones I wasn’t. My shortcomings are too numerous to mention, but one unique gift I’ve been given is the ability to create paintings that are parables for the poor in spirit.

I consider the poor in spirit to be anyone burdened by the busyness and stresses of modern life, weighed down by darkness, discouragement, or sadness.

My paintings seem to be a ray of light that pierces that darkness. My stories are a glass of cold water for spirits thirsty for hope. They’re usually a little silly, but I’ve come to see that sometimes a smile is a most holy thing, and a laugh can heal us in a way no medicine can. The whimsy in my work serves to catch attention long enough for the story behind it to penetrate the soul.

Time and again, I return to this combination of art and story as perhaps the most important contribution I have to make to the world. 

At its best, it looks like this: I am on stage. My art is on a big screen behind me. The hearts of the audience are in my hands as I tell its story, which is also theirs. They smile, they nod, they laugh, they cry. At the end, they line up to buy a print or a book — filled with even more art and stories — as a reminder to take home to keep what happened in their heart alive. As I sign it, they tell me how much something I said mattered and made a difference. 

It’s a boon to my ego, I won’t lie. It’s much better than speaking to a room of indifferent people with their arms crossed. But the joy I feel in that moment is more than pride; it’s the feeling of being fully alive and aligned with why I was made. Like the feeling a piano must have in the hands of a virtuoso playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, versus being abandoned in a corner somewhere, collecting dust and growing more out of tune with each passing day.

I want to spend as many of my remaining days in that zone as I can.

We’re all running out of time. 

But that’s not our only enemy.

Hot on our heels is also frustration and fear.

I am often frustrated that I haven’t been able to reach as many people as I’d imagined when I was younger. When I have the moments described above, when everything is clicking, I wonder, why isn’t this more common? Am I doing something wrong? Missing something? Held back by my weaknesses? 

I must fight the frustration that the work is not reaching more people than I wish it could. Otherwise, that frustration eventually grows into discouragement that can keep me from making any art at all.

Then there’s the fear. I have a lingering anxiety that everything is about to come crashing down, and I’ll lose my home, my studio, and the ability to make a living doing what I love. Fear tells me that the jig is up; that none of this should have lasted as long as it already has. It’s just a matter of time before I’ll be forced to finally get what I’ve been avoiding for 26 years: a real job.

This fear works against me, too. It convinces me to spend time elsewhere, presumably on more “marketable” and “lucrative” and “responsible” things that will at least keep this ship afloat, even if it does relegate the art making to more of a hobby or side hustle.

I’m going in for a colonoscopy next week, a routine rite of passage for a guy my age. Hopefully, I will receive an all-clear. Or maybe they’ll find something that tells them I’ve got less than a year left to live.

Either way, I’m in a race against the clock. 

How many paintings do I have left in me? Fifteen? Fifty? Five hundred? 

I don’t know.

I do know that frustration and fear are conspiring to prevent me from making as many as I could.

A recent trip sparked an idea for Kim and me that has quickly grown into one of the most exciting tinker projects we’ve ever pursued. It’s a fresh way to get more of the paintings inside me out into the world and into lives that need more wonder, hope, and joy. Even better, it will give you a chance to support my work while fighting back against Adultitis in your own life. I can’t wait to share more next week.

But what about you?

It’s not just me racing against time; we all are.

What do you love to do? What are the activities that make you feel alive and in sync with the reason you were born?

How are frustration and fear keeping you from doing more of that?

The things we love to do, the ones that fire us up as they bring light to a dark world, rarely feel like work. The prospect of doing even more of that can feel too good to be true.

But as songwriter Jess Ray sings, “It may be too good to be understood, but it’s not too good to be true.”

We need to fight like hell to keep doing those things.

Because the forces of hell are fighting to keep us from doing them.

The world is dark.

Don’t fall for the lie that it’s selfish to shine your light.

Or underestimate how many places that light can reach.

Get out all your unmade paintings.

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☕ How can you spend more time this week doing the thing that most lights you up?

A young man sent me an email looking for advice. He recently graduated from the “comfort blanket of college and chucked towards the open jaws of real life.” He was hoping to receive guidance for young people in his situation to “make the world outside not seem so threatening and overwhelming.”

The first step is to understand that although the world can be very overwhelming and threatening, it is also amazing and magical and overflowing with opportunity.

The problem is that when confronted with uncertainty and overwhelm, most people hide under the false security of the status quo. A paint-by-number approach to life is tempting. We believe that if we do what we’re told, play by the rules, and color inside the lines, everything will be ok. That path seems safe, but it draws you away from living the life you were made for.

My advice to young adults is to start chasing their dream now and stay the course. You don’t need to know all the steps or exactly where it will lead. Just take the obvious next step, no matter how insignificant it appears. This path will get hard, yes, but it only gets harder later. You have the advantage of naïveté, energy, low overhead, and very little to lose. Kim and I went years living on her kindergarten teaching salary, eating Hamburger Helper, and not running the air conditioner in our dumpy apartment. It was never fun or easy, but it was easier than trying to do it with three kids and a mortgage.

Don’t wait to get established. 

Don’t wait until you have figured everything out. 

Don’t wait for the timing to be right. 

And for heaven’s sake, don’t give up.

I have a message of even greater importance for everyone else, the ones for whom graduation is a distant memory from a simpler time.

As the old saying goes, the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second-best time is today. Yes, there are certain advantages when starting young, as I outlined above. But it’s worth keeping in mind that although I didn’t have the pressure of three kids and a mortgage to contend with back then, I also didn’t have the wisdom and experience I now have, which I’m sure would have helped shorten my learning curve.

Don’t surrender the rest of your life wishing you had started sooner or lament the choices you’ve made this far.

Make new ones. 

You may not yet have everything you need to finish the race, but you have everything you need to start. 

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☕ What are you finally going to start this week?

I’m writing a new book. Or rather, I am redoing an old one. (I shared a little bit about that in this video.)

I spent six days in a very old monastery overlooking the rolling hills of Wisconsin. The kitchen was dark and creepy, but the weather and views were spectacular. I made great progress on establishing the structure and flow of the book, thanks to some help from an unusual source.

One of my favorite aspects of the Catholic faith is the great tradition of the communion of saints. A saint is any person living in Heaven with God, but the Church also designates specific individuals to serve as role models for us here on Earth. These holy men and women, despite their imperfections, give us an example to follow in our own quest to become the best version of ourselves. 

One such saint is a remarkable young woman named Thérèse who lived in France at the end of the 1800s. She died when she was just twenty-four, but left us with writings filled with wisdom beyond her years. Despite near anonymity while alive, she eventually became the most well-known, beloved, and impactful saint of the twentieth century. 

I’ve written before on Sheboygan Catholic, my other blog that goes deeper into issues of faith, about the experience of having a saint “friend” me. Well, on my writing retreat, Thérèse made her presence felt, big time. 

I suppose it should have come as no surprise. After all, she was a member of the Discalced Carmelite order, the same order that lives on and maintains the property where I was staying. And she is regarded as one of the most childlike of all the saints, which is right in line with our brand and the content of this new book.

She once wrote, “The brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy. I believe that if all the lowly flowers wished to be roses, nature would lose her springtime beauty and the fields would no longer be enameled with lovely hues.”

While in the early stages of developing the book’s foundation, I became very overwhelmed and intimidated. Like any author, I want it to be good, useful, and ideally, life-changing for readers. I look at other books and writers I respect, and it doesn’t take long to feel ill-suited and unworthy for the task at hand. 

It’s easy for us to compare ourselves to others and feel overmatched. (I wrote a whole book about it!) Whether you are a teacher, a nurse, an engineer, an athlete, a student, a parent (or frankly, anything else!), there are probably people you look up to. People whose excellence you wish you could emulate, but compared to whom you feel so far inferior. I feel that way about many artists, authors, and speakers I admire (not to mention ALL of the saints!).

They are roses, and we are just humble little daisies.

But Thérèse reminds us that we are all beautiful and have something important to offer the world, our communities, and our families. On my retreat, she reminded me that whatever impact my book will have on the world, it will only do so to the extent that I put all of ME into it. If I try to write a version of the book that I think someone I admire would write, it will fail.

Your clients, your students, your patients, your friends, and your children will not be served by you trying to be some idealized, watered-down version of someone else. 

They need you. The best version of you.

The simple, humble version of you, doing small things with great love, is enough.

You are enough. 

Roses are lovely. But so are daisies. And daisies are the flowers my wife chose to hold on our wedding day, the 26th anniversary of which we celebrated the day after I returned from my retreat. 

I’m happy to say that I made great progress on the book. It’s far from finished, but thanks to my friend Thérèse — also known as The Little Flower — it’s going to be good. 

Because it’s back on track to being a book only I can write. 

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☕ What is an area of your life right now that could benefit from you being YOU, and not a person trying to fill someone else’s shoes?

Having lived in Wisconsin for two-and-a-half decades, the struggle is real. 

Being a Cubs and Bears fan while living behind the Cheddar Curtain is no picnic. I’ve spent the majority of my adult life suffocated by Brewers and Packers propaganda. Visiting Illinois — and especially Chicagoland — is like a breath of fresh air. Seeing all the Cubs and Bears billboards and bumper stickers feels like sweet, sweet freedom.

Even though it feels good to be around friendly fans, I’m glad I live in Wisconsin because it has helped me remember that although we root for different teams, we’re not all that different.

Many of my good friends are Brewers and Packers fans. Although we rib each other from time to time, doing life with them reinforces our similarities. We may wear different jerseys, but we love our families, our state, and our country, and share the same hopes and fears for our future.

Even the reason we root for the teams we do have remarkably similar origin stories. In most cases, you cheer for the team you learned to love as a kid. Perhaps your dad or your grandma was a fan, and you enjoyed spending time watching games with them, and because they were happy when your team won, so were you. Maybe you fell in love with a certain player as you were coming of age, and for all these reasons, the team carries a great sense of nostalgia, reminding you of happy memories from a simpler time. 

When it comes down to it, as Jerry Seinfeld says, we’re actually just rooting for clothes.

It’s one thing to talk about a trivial thing like sports, but what about the other, more important causes for division in our lives, like politics and religion?

Doesn’t matter. We’re still fundamentally the same.

Before I explain, let’s have some fun. Check out this image below, the one with the dark block on top of the white one.

Actually, the gray of both blocks is exactly the same.

Don’t believe me? Cover the middle line with your finger.

Our perception and our reality are not always aligned. Truth, like color, is impacted by what’s around us. 

The truth is that most people want to live in a peaceful, safe, just, and free society. They want to live in an environment that allows them and their loved ones to thrive.

Yes, differences remain. We disagree on the best way to achieve those things. Obviously, other people have different tastes and preferences. They enjoy different hobbies, like different kinds of music, and spend their weekend differently from you.

But on the most basic, fundamental, human level, they want the same things as you.

The problem is that, as in the image above, there are forces that come between us, creating division. It can take the form of politicians inventing enemies to earn votes, the news media sowing fear and outrage to capture attention, or even social media algorithms, designed to curate an experience that ensures we are surrounded only by people who agree with us. 

What are you letting into your life? Are you spending the majority of your time watching, listening, and conversing with people who agree with you, while lamenting how angry and divisive our world has become?

It’s easy to hate Brewer fans when I’m in a bar surrounded by Cub fans. 

But having a beer with a Brewers fan, one-on-one, talking about life and our families, is a great way to be reminded how similar we actually are.

Sometime soon, spend real time in a real conversation (not a debate!) with someone who seems super different from you. Don’t talk about the stuff that divides you; talk about life, and the place you grew up, and memories from your childhood, and who your favorite player was when you were twelve.

I’ll bet anything you’ll realize you’re not as different as you thought.

And when the game begins, may the best laundry win.

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☕ Have you ever become friends with someone who seemed extremely different from you at first? Is there someone similar in your life today that you could invite to coffee this week?

I take a walk almost every day, usually taking the same route. This is intentional. I set my inner GPS, and, free from thinking about where I’m going, my mind is allowed to wander in whatever direction it chooses. 

The other day, I tried an experiment. I decided to walk the same path, but in the opposite direction.

I couldn’t believe what I experienced.

Despite the familiar surroundings, I saw a ton of things I’d never seen before:

I saw new signs, strange knots in trees, and unique vistas that were there all along, just not in my field of vision. 

Then there was the strangely-shaped house I only noticed because I was approaching it from a different angle.

My biggest shock was discovering an impressive landscaping arrangement spelling out the name of the cemetery I like passing through. Even though I walked through it hundreds of times, I didn’t know that word was there because my back was always to it on my usual route.

The experiment reminded me how our lives have a way of becoming familiar, too, making us blind.

We form routines that help maintain discipline and automate decisions so our brain has the bandwidth for other, more important tasks. But these routines can also crowd out serendipity and novelty, which makes us feel older. Researchers tell us that one reason time seems to fly so much faster than when we were kids is that we have fewer novel experiences. 

The “same old, same old” steals our years away, one moment at a time.

This is why travel is so beneficial. It lifts us out of our ordinary and drops us into something new. We can gain valuable perspective (and slow time down a bit!) by shaking ourselves out of our sleepwalking state from time to time.

And you don’t even need a plane ticket or a passport.

You could literally take an alternate route to work. (Or a different mode of transportation: Ride your bike if you normally drive, or take the bus if you typically walk.)

Go to a different church service than usual, even if it’s just a different time.

Eliminate tools of speed and convenience and try doing a job or household task the long-hand, old-fashioned way.

Swap chores or responsibilities with a spouse or employee for a day.

Listen to a radio station you never listen to. 

You can also gain a fresh perspective by hopping into a time machine and revisiting something from your past.

Explore a place you haven’t been in years, like an old neighborhood where you used to live, your elementary school, or the place where you had your first date with your spouse.

Watch a movie or episode of a television show you haven’t seen in decades. 

Read a book you read when you were a teenager or young adult.

You might be surprised by what memories come back, or how different it seems, now that you’re different, too.

By the way, it’s not just our environment that becomes familiar. Our perceptions of people can become just as entrenched. 

It’s not unusual for relationships to be relegated to routine. If the interactions we have with our co-worker, our spouse, our children become rote, we miss things. We might make incorrect assumptions about them. 

This is where doing something together that’s outside your routine can be revelatory. Take a pasta-making class with your partner. Go camping with just one of your kids. Attend a ballgame or organize a charitable event with your co-workers. 

These opportunities allow us to see one another in a new light, to encounter new facets of the other person that were there the whole time, but we simply didn’t have an occasion to witness.

It can even change the perceptions of self-perceived “enemies.” Sometimes, the opportunity to engage with someone we dislike or disagree with under entirely new circumstances can transform the relationship. There have been people in my life that I didn’t particularly like at first who became dear friends after encountering them in a different light.

Here’s the point.

Routines are great, until they become ruts.

When we make even the smallest effort to shake things up and force ourselves to experience a new perspective, we can slow down our lives, transform our relationships, and maybe even uncover solutions to our most stubborn problems.

When we see with new eyes, we encounter blessings hiding in plain sight.

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☕ What is one routine you can shake up this week, or a new adventure you could have with someone in your life?

I pride myself on my imagination.

I’ve always been a daydreamer. I can get so immersed in my imagination that I’ve missed exits on the interstate more than a few times. (Just ask my wife.)

Plus, I’m an artist. My paintings feature macarons as spaceships, elk wearing bathrobes, and war planes dropping gummy bears from the sky.

My imagination is on point.

Or so I thought.

Consider how convicted I felt when I recently read something I wrote in an old Kim & Jason Annual:

I just want to  see Kim & Jason touch the lives of millions of people, even if in some small way. I cannot imagine doing anything else with my life.

I cannot imagine doing anything else with my life.

If you’re new here, you might not know that I haven’t been doing Kim & Jason for a long time. I retired the comic strip in 2007. And in a plot twist that would have come as quite a shock to 2007 Jason, not only am I not doing Kim & Jason, but my career unfolded in a way I could have never imagined, and I am totally ok with it. It’s even better than what I was doing then.

When I wrote those words in 2001, I couldn’t foresee the speaking career that would take me to 48 of the 50 United States (I’m coming for you, Delaware and Mississippi!). I couldn’t envision how much I’d love making the art that I now make, let alone what it might look like.

And therein lies the problem.

There was something even better out there, and not only didn’t I see it, but I couldn’t even imagine it.

Frankly, I should have been well acquainted with this limit to my imagination. It wasn’t new. Less than a decade earlier, when I was a teenager, I was despondent over my struggle to win over a girl I was pursuing. I sat at the dining room table to confide in my father, laying out the case for us being a perfect match, as if logic alone would resolve the deteriorating situation. I was looking for some wisdom to unlock her heart and our happily ever after.

Instead, he said this: “Jason, have you ever considered there might be a girl X out there who’s even better for you?”

My heart sank. Either my plea wasn’t convincing enough, or my father wasn’t as perceptive as I’d given him credit for. 

Girl X?!

It was the single stupidest thing I’d ever heard in my life.

Because my imagination was terrible. 

And apparently very short-sighted. Literally just a few months later, I met so-called “Girl X,” whose real name is Kim, and now happens to be my wife.

Frankly, I’m not alone. It’s a problem for all of us, this pandemic of subpar imaginations.

Oh, they are professional grade when it comes to imagining worst-case scenarios, able to summon tragic plot twists too far-fetched even for Hollywood. We see them plain as day, a smorgasbord of unhappy endings in living technicolor. But when it comes to imagining something better than our present circumstances, our imagination stalls like a cart with no horse.

Life has always looked this way for me, and it always will.

No one could ever be as good a match for me as he was.

I should be content with where I am now; this is as good as I can expect.

It’s been so long; I can’t imagine how our situation could ever improve.

How can anything good possibly come from this disaster?

These are undeniably true statements…

If your imagination stinks.

Just because you don’t know how something is going to turn out doesn’t mean it has to be scary.

Fortunately, we don’t have to figure out how to level up our imaginations. We just have to trust in someone more creative than we’ll ever be.

I never could have imagined inventing snow.

I never could have imagined the smell after it rains.

I never could have imagined the taste of a strawberry plucked fresh from the garden.

I never could have imagined adding those adorable dimples on the knuckles of a baby’s hand.

If I could have imagined such a thing as a fish, I probably would have stopped with one. I never could have imagined the seemingly limitless variety of them that swim in the sea.

I never could have imagined a seahorse, a sea urchin, or the staggering variety of seashells that wash up on beaches.

Are you like me, too busy holding tightly to what I have, fearful of losing it, because I can’t imagine something better coming along? When life throws you a curveball you didn’t expect, is your imagination exposed as an imposter?

My imagination is pretty good. But it’s far from great, especially when life goes sideways. When it does, I take great solace in this reminder from St Paul:

“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9)

Just because you can’t imagine a happy ending doesn’t mean there isn’t one.

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☕ Where in your life could your imagination benefit from an upgrade these days? You probably have the worst-case scenarios down; what are some best-case scenarios that could happen?

If a secret isn’t secret, can it still be called a secret?

Over twenty years ago, I wrote my first book, titled “Escape Adulthood: 8 Secrets of Childhood for the Stressed-Out Grown-Up.”

Can I tell you a secret?

The secret to success and happiness is not a secret.

The recipe is really just hard advice none of us want to follow, so we keep searching for some magic wand, secret potion, or easy shortcut that doesn’t exist. 

In my half-century of life, I’ve heard lots of inspiring stories. After a while, if you’re paying attention, you realize they are all the same. In one week alone, I heard about three people who achieved great victories after overcoming great odds: An athlete on the way to the NFL who got paralyzed. A woman who had both feet amputated. A guy who got busted for drugs and was sentenced to 65 years. 

Sure, the details — the races, genders, backgrounds, and specific circumstances — are different. But the advice is always the same. 

Always.

Change your attitude. Practice gratitude. Do hard things.

Simple. Clear. Straightforward.

But far from easy.

We are always looking for the hack, but there isn’t one. 

To get from where you are to where you want to be requires a change. 

You have to change your thoughts.

You have to change your actions.

That’s it. 

Deep down, we know this.

But it’s hard.

It’s easier to trick yourself into thinking there must be some knowledge you don’t have. Some guru you need to find. Some hidden path you haven’t uncovered yet. 

No. The secrets aren’t secret.

Change your thoughts.

Change your actions.

Easier still is to paint yourself a victim. If someone else is responsible for your suffering, it lets you off the hook. It excuses you from doing the work.

And hey, you can go with that strategy if you want. It’s pretty prevalent these days. I’m not saying you’re wrong about the cause of your problem. It just won’t do anything to help.

I don’t even know why we keep publishing “self-help” books. Everything that matters has been said. They have different authors, different titles, and words arranged in different combinations, but every single one of them is some version of this:

Change your thoughts.

Change your actions.

My first book is out of print. I am in the process of rewriting it. The original was written when I was in my twenties and is filled with things I believed to be true. This one will be about what I know is true, because I spent the last twenty years living out those beliefs.

And you know what? There’s a good chance I’ll include “secrets” somewhere in the subtitle. 

Why? Because I know we can’t seem to resist them, and I really want people to read the book.

But the truth is this:

If you want to write a novel…

If you want to lose fifty pounds…

If you want to learn a language…

If you want to find your soulmate…

If you want to make the team…

If you want to improve your lot in life…

If you want to achieve that dream…

If you want to be more successful…

If you want to turn your life around…

There is no hack. 

The only secret is not a secret.

The answer is that you have to do hard things.

Change your thoughts.

Change your actions.

You don’t have to do either, of course.

Just own the fact that even though you’d like life to be different, you’ve decided you’d rather not change your thoughts or actions.

Do yourself a favor. Be honest. Call a spade a spade.

But please.

Please stop looking for secrets.

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☕ Do you find it harder to change your thoughts or your actions?

For me, the start of baseball season is one of the most wonderful times of the year. It means winter is over, and hope springs eternal for each team. Even long-suffering fans know that every season brings with it favorites who falter and long shots who shock the world. 

I saw a tweet in a newspaper years ago (when X was still Twitter) from Bryce Harper (when he was still playing for the Nationals, not the Phillies) that still resonates:

“Play this game like the 8 year old you used to be, dreaming to play in the show! Heart, passion, and fire! Remember where you came from!”

–Bryce Harper

He tweeted this rallying cry after his team lost 2-0 to the Mets.

You might not be a Major League baseball player, but you are a former eight-year-old.

Remember when you were eight?

Remember how amazing being a grown-up sounded?

No one telling you to make your bed! No school bells or book reports or homework! Happy Meals every day! You’d trade in your bike for a car (hopefully the flying kind) and could go anywhere you wanted!

When you were a kid, you spent a lot of time imagining the day when you would finally be grown up, with all the amazing powers that came with it, like independence and height and a drivers license. You had dreams and visions of great adventures, once you finally had the chance to call your own shots and live your own story. 

If you’re reading this, and you’re an adult, how’s it going?

I know, it’s not all it was cracked up to be. 

But.

Are you taking advantage of your powers and the opportunities now before you? 

Kim and I like to joke that as adults, we have the ability to make the best living room forts because we are taller, have a better handle on physics, and have access to all the sheets and blankets in the whole house.

And yet, when was the last time you made an epic fort and spent an entire Saturday in it?

It appears that adulthood is wasted on adults.

Yes, I know well the unanticipated downsides of adulthood: the bills, the filing of taxes, the thankless and exhausting task of raising children of our own.

But can you imagine how excited your 8-year-old self would be with the power you now possess?

You don’t have to dream about publishing a book, learning how to sail, opening a bakery, starting a community garden, putting on a concert, building a go-kart, or flying somewhere you’ve always wanted to visit. You can actually do them! You finally have the power, resources, and freedom to change the world. (At least your small part.)

You can just do things.

But the fact remains, most adults are still sitting around waiting for someone to give them permission, as if they were still eight years old.

What’s worse, they’re missing that eight-year-old energy.

Remember where you came from. Are you playing this game of life with the heart, passion, and fire of an eight-year-old?

If not, get to it. 

This game only has so many innings.

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☕ What area of your life could use a little more eight-year-old energy?

My art studio is where the magic happens.

Magic that has nothing to do with how the pretty pictures are made.

My studio serves many purposes – it’s my favorite place to sketch, brainstorm, write, paint, and design cool things – but basically, it’s where I go to slow down, get silent, and listen to God. It’s my creative base of operations where I receive light that I reflect into a dark world.

That’s why I call it Echo Base.

(And also because I am a Star Wars nerd.)

When I am there, in my happy place, a strange phenomenon occurs: Time simultaneously slows down and speeds up.

It slows down in that all the distractions and frenzied noise from the outside world fade away. I am present, and everything feels calmer, slower.

Meanwhile, time flies. I am so engrossed in the act of creation that hours pass in a way that feels like minutes.

As wonderful as it feels to be in that zone, even that’s not the magical part.

“Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs.”

I first heard that line in a Switchfoot song many years ago. I was probably barely into my twenties, but it sure resonated, and still does today.

As we journey through life, it’s easy to get duped into doubting our beliefs. When we put too much stock in our doubts, the grip on our beliefs loosens. This leads to uncertainty and anxiety, which causes even more doubt. We are more susceptible to this cycle when we are operating at a hurried pace, inundated by noise and distractions.

When we are in a place of peace and calm, it’s easier to feel a sense of conviction and certainty about what we know to be true.

My studio is where I doubt my doubts and believe my beliefs. I do this by painting what I believe: That God is good, the world is beautiful, and light always defeats darkness. (If you look closely at my portfolio, that’s the theme you’ll see over and over again.)

If you look at the world, it doesn’t take long to doubt those beliefs. It looks like darkness is winning. The world can be violently ugly. And God doesn’t always seem so good.

When I am discouraged and filled with doubt, I retreat to my studio to create things that are good, true, and beautiful. This act of creation helps remind me of my beliefs, causing the doubts to shrivel and fade away.

In the midst of this process is where the true magic — bordering on miraculous — occurs. As the act of painting reinforces my belief, it also transforms it into a physical embodiment of that belief. This arrangement of paint on canvas turns it into a totem, something tangible that can be passed along, in the form of a social media post, a greeting card, or a framed print that can be shared with someone else. At that point, it becomes more than just a painting. It becomes a gift that reinforces the belief within them, perhaps in a desperately-needed moment, when doubts were starting to pile up in their own life.

It’s like a message in a bottle that can float on through the years, impacting people far away and even after I’m gone.

If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.

In these days when darkness seems to have the upper hand and anxiety is at an all-time high, retreat to your secret hideout. You might not have an art studio, but I bet you do have a place where time simultaneously stands still and speeds up. A place where that little flame inside you gets reignited.

Turns out that any time you light a candle, even if just for yourself, it can illuminate the path for someone else, too.

Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs.