If you find yourself in a lot of debt, struggling with financials, without an easy way out, you may think that a quick influx of cash would solve your issues. If you could be reset back to the baseline, then there’s no way you’d get yourself in that situation again. But many times, that’s not the case. Take lottery winners for example. Research cited by the Washington Post says that up to 70% of large lottery winners go bankrupt within 5 years. One day all your financial issues are solved, and within a few years you’re right back to where you started. What about those who are obese or overweight? Many of those people say that if they could reset themselves to a healthy weight, it’d be much easier for them to maintain it and keep themselves from becoming overweight again. But this too isn’t the case. Take extreme caloric restriction or crash diets as… Read More

The other weekend I was helping my brother clean and declutter our parent’s house. Apparently, he’s like the male Marie Kondo of our family. And while we decluttered the Zerbe household, we stumbled upon a pile of notebooks that seemed pretty old and started to page through them. We quickly figured out it was my dad’s old notebooks from when he was a teenager in high school. We saw his fishing log, random to-do lists, and even a highly detailed mechanical drawing of a boat engine. No idea what he was thinking back then. Maybe he used that drawing to impress my once single mom into going on a boat outing. 🤷 If so, I guess it worked. But shortly after that we saw his workout programs outlined with exercises, sets, and reps. This was pretty neat! And then we saw his progression documented not only by his weights increasing as he got… Read More

At times, I forget how much I enjoy nothing. And by nothing, I don’t mean putting on a mindless tv show or watching my favorite YouTuber. I don’t mean using technology as an escape or activities as a distraction. I mean the exact opposite. I mean going for a walk without headphones in. Or driving in the car without the radio on. Or sitting on a bench at a park in silence. Or standing in my living room, leaning against the wall, looking out the window. I mean excluding myself from all external stimuli to pay attention to the thoughts running through my head. To spend time examining the feelings I’m having and stories I’m telling myself. To enjoy the slow rush of peacefulness that floods over my mind. It’s weird to explain, but in these moments there’s this calmness I experience that I can only describe as serenity. It’s an untroubled, unstressed… Read More