Pete Michaud

Dominoes and the Price of Admission

I really wanted to quit my job. I was too afraid of the domino effect to do it though. Quitting my job meant not being able to pay my mortgage and take care of my family. We get stuck because we start thinking about the domino effect. The fear that the changes we want are going to cause a cascade of changes...

You Suck At Everything

People are born with talents. You better hope you get one that’s impressive or lucrative, because otherwise you’re screwed. Take these two artists for example: Artist #1 Artist #2 I didn’t choose these two artists so I could pick on the first one though. I actually picked these two because...

Strong Man and Doer of Deeds

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short...

Change the World, No Excuses

Thank you very much!! Your blog was a little spark that ignite a fire inside me. I don’t know if you remember, but my heart was destroyed, and the next day a I got an email from G8 (the best 8 universities in Australia) inviting me to apply for masters. It was something i have always wanted, but at...

How to Choose Your Emotions

We think our emotions happen to us. The internal experience of an emotion makes it feel inevitable. Our language even tricks us: that phone bill made me angry. But that’s an illusion. To prove that our reactions and experiences are entirely within our control, I present one Thích Quảng Đức. ...

How to Break Your Limits

Gema is 23 years old and might be gay. She’s not sure. (Not news.) The problem about being maybe-gay is that Gema lives with her hyper-conservative parents, and has no legal rights as an unmarried Muslim woman in Indonesia. She was in a bind. Her parents expect her to find a nice boy (of their...

Stop Apologizing

This is a note to self. I’m pretty good at not apologizing for who and what I am, but this whole energy work thing got my panties in a bunch. Half of my friends think energy work is obvious. A fact of nature, and of life. The other half unsubscribed from my e-mail list after the essay went out....

Fear Doesn’t Stop

If you live in the fantasy that life will start once you are no longer afraid, you will be playing the waiting game forever. That’s a quote from the beautiful and brainy Dr. Brenner of A Flourishing Life. She touches on a hugely important point in a recent post: fear isn’t conquered by forcing...

Authenticity Alienates (That’s Okay)

I could brand myself as a business blog and I’d be credible since my retirement story is the the kind of thing that the blogosphere loves to jerk off to. I could talk about technology like I did when I was Ken Sharpe. I could talk about cognitive biases, or philosophy. The list continues. I’m not...

Positive Psychology

People who are trying to improve themselves by thinking about the way they think often ask the questions: What’s wrong? and How can I fix it? Which is a more useful tool than thinking about nothing and doing nothing. So honor yourself for that. But they say what we focus on becomes our reality. So when...