Life is messy. We spend our time trying to organize the chaos into something recognizable, but messiness will always be part of it, especially when…

There are probably many people in your life who believe in your ability to succeed. Mom or dad or the significant other. But those individuals’ own lives consume the bulk of their time. They are too busy…

Procrastination sucks. If one thing in life has slowed me down more than any other, it’s procrastination. It’s not as much an issue for activities I feel I must do, like earning a living or making an effort to stay healthy. But for those ambitious stretch goals I think will make…

How do you feel when you walk outside to a bright blue sky? Does it feel good? It does to me.

What if the day is dark, with rainclouds hanging low? Different feeling, right? I like it sometimes if…

I’m a sucker for a distraction. Too often I’ll walk into my home office with a specific purpose in mind only to...

“Stop staring at the instrument panel,” my flight instructor said, finger pointing to the blue stretch of sky beyond the windshield. “Everything that makes flying worth it is...

Failure can be a scary thing. Most of us sense it lurking at the edge of...

In my last post, I promised ideas to help you flow with life versus forcing it. If you’ve been trying to force life to...

Continued from Life Force:

There must be an easier way.

Those words sifted through my mind five years ago as I...

I’ve penned Lessons from the Cockpit for over four years and in all those posts I don’t believe I’ve written one as important as this. If I’ve cultivated any major life philosophy over the years, this is it…

Conventional wisdom says aquarium fish only grow as large as the tank will support. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m willing to bet it’s…

For those of you who still listen to the radio, perhaps you have a favorite station you tune in to on the way to work every day. What if a runaway truck demolished your…

Our upstairs air conditioner stopped working one Friday evening in late May. I almost called the repair guy but held off. Waiting until Monday meant…

A great actor can transform a bit part into something amazing and memorable. That is why the acting great Stanislavsky said, “There are no small roles, only small actors.” The quote stood out for me in a passage when I recently read…

My friend, David Horne, occasionally writes a “Movie Lessons” segment for his blog. I love these and constantly nag him to write them more often. So, while I wait for…

Summer always reminds me of childhood when I’d play outside with friends until dusk and beyond. Many evenings, when the light faded, the soft glow of fireflies pulled us from…

Life on the ground is often rigid. We spend the better part of our days living between the lines, whether it’s the boundaries of a house or office, the narrow edges of a sidewalk, or the slightly wider lines of a…

As I neared my speaking venue, I suddenly regretted not making time to wash my car. The thin film of dust on the vehicle’s black hood looked even worse through my…

Whenever I lift my eyes toward the sky, my mood improves. I noticed this a long time ago and always assumed my fondness of the sky triggered it, my inner kid spellbound by…

Six years ago, three friends and I spent a week paddling fifty miles in canoes on the Green River. The stretch of water winds through…