Pete Michaud

Don’t Find Happy, Be Happy

You are perfect and complete. This has happened to me twice now, so I need to share it. The first time was with a Christian missionary in Kansas City. The second time, exactly like the first, was with a Hare Krisha devotee in St. Augustine. I like the second version better. Giorgio (like Giorgio Armani, he...

Brené Brown on Vulnerability

This video is awesome because Brené teaches you how to be vulnerable and fearless, empathic and passionate. It touches on most of the subjects I talk about on this blog. She teaches us to love ourselves and create deep connections with other people. She’s talking about basic human needs, she’s...

Randy Pausch: Make Your Dreams Reality

Randy Pausch, pancreatic cancer victim, reminds us in his last lecture to stop our whining because happiness is a choice we make day by day. You only have one chance to make your dreams a reality, so do...

Now is the Time for Risk

“We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and...

Get Off Your Cross And Fight

On Friday I attended the first Jacksonville PB&J (Party, Benefits & Jam). PB&J brings people together every two months to raise money for a local charity. This time we raised money for The Sanctuary on 8th Street, a place to develop inner city youth. Al Letson was a speaker there, and he talked...

Today You, Tomorrow Me

Rhoner shares a story about the kindness of strangers. It’s a little rough around the edges since it’s essentially a forum post, but it was enough to make me misty. Just about every time I see someone [stranded on the side of the road] I stop. I kind of got out of the habit in the last couple of...

How to Get Your Wallet Back

This is a story of empathy brought you by StoryCorps, a radio show that shares stories from ordinary people. Julio Diaz, the storyteller, gives us a shining case in point about choosing love over fear, just like in “No Such Thing as Monsters”. The acceptable response was anger and violence, but...

Stop Thinking and Do It

It’s important to think and plan for situations that you expect to encounter in your life, but thinking and planning can never come close to actually experiencing the situation first hand. You can’t learn to program by reading a book—you can only prepare yourself to learn to program. You...

The Rules of Improv

After many years of being a fan and going through workshops, I recently auditioned for, and was cast in an improv troupe that does weekly shows in downtown Jacksonville. The reason I got involved was that it was just fun—I laughed until I cried, and the workshops energized me. Somewhere in between all...

The Art Gallery That Exists

The other day I was out with my wife at Starbucks drinking a peppermint tea (I love peppermint). We sat talking about nerdy things like whether a cure for aging would change cultural norms surrounding suicide or affect people’s risk aversion in a statistically significant way. “That’s...