how to be aware in an unaware world

Tag: mindfulness

Principles
At the same time as writing this new post, I began a popular challenge called 75 Hard about two weeks ago.
The challenge is to go 75 Days doing specific tasks that will turn into habits after about day 66 (according to James Clear – author of Atomic Habits).
I modified the original version to my liking with a great app called ‘75 Days Challenge’ which is among many that serve the same purpose. The habits I have set out to ingrain over the next 61 days are:
- Do a small act of kindness
- Meditate for at least 10 minutes
- Do a workout routine (30 push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, and squats)
- Read for at least 20 minutes
- Write a full page journal entry
- Cook a healthy meal
- No Buy Challenge (only purchase necessary consumables)
As I began and modified this challenge, I came across a set of principles that I would like to guide me. Those principles are the building blocks of character, and so this post is all about that intersection.
Defined through the lens of mindfulness, character takes on a deeper meaning: the consistent outward and inward expression of virtues in right thought, emotion, and action.
To be consciously aware of how and why our inner self impacts our outer actions is no easy task. It is in fact a very rare task, especially consistently.
What this looks like day to day is someone who habitually responds to life’s ups and downs with clarity, integrity, responsibility and compassion rather than judgment, reactivity, and impulse.
Meditation, when paired with these subtle character choices, may just change our very being.
Below are principles in mindfulness that can change the very nature of our egos, or as my mom likes to call it, edging God out.
Intentional Choice:
Mindfulness creates a small yet powerful space between stimulus and response. I want to yell at this person and I am yelling at this person or I want to buy this car and I am driving off the lot in this car.
To be the backseat rider of our own emotions, sensations, and thoughts really is a super power. Most people live in a dream state, momentarily aware from time to time, but never fully awake.
Take consumerism for example. Most people, including myself, fall victim to indulgent spending, racking up credit cards, not realizing all they have spent until they gawk at the bill.
Self-awareness:
To know oneself is to know the secrets of the universe. See your intentions, biases, and habits as they rise and fall without denial or distortion. Call them out in a kind and loving way. Write them down in order to see their frequency.
We cannot know a mind that is clouded in judgement, especially towards ourselves.
This takes a gentle practice of noting. All while being attentive to context and consequences.
Ethical Presence:
The practice of ethics was once very commonplace, but seen more than we recognize today: opening the door for someone, helping someone with their groceries, or my favorite, giving the endless gifts of a smile and a compliment.
Ethical Principles such as kindness, honesty, and fairness exhibited each day, naturally, grow within us the seed of happiness.
Happiness is when our thoughts, actions, and speech are in harmony.
Emotional Regulation:
Our character is not defined in the absence of difficult emotions, in fact, it is sharpened through them.
Character is defined through meeting our emotions with steadiness and wisdom, rather than allowing them to dictate our behavior.
Compassion & Interconnectedness:
A character defined by mindful living recognizes the shared humanity of all living things. It forces us to act with empathy, care, respect, and yes, awareness (especially under stress, tiredness, or in conflict).
I can’t think of a more mindful act than to be shown disagreement and yet still be warm and kind, unconcerned with right or wrong.
And so, I think I’ll just leave it at that!
Three More Things!
1. Read – The 7 Principles of Mindfulness
2. Listen – Wake Up / Wind Down Series
3. Watch – Poverty isn’t a lack of character
May 8, 2026
Humans
It’s been a while since I posted & I feel now an obligation not to justify the time away, but in the famous words of Phil McKnight, just do it – that is, write more posts at a higher frequency.
In the time away, however, I have dived into books as a way of learning from great writers, which if I am disciplined and graced with prose, can become by the end of my tiny life.
This post was written at work, while pondering the growing divide between each other in the advent of growing reasons not to need each other – this is frankly frightening & should create urgency in our society. Anyway, hope y’all like it.
We need more humans to be there for each other than ever before.
On the massive wave of the AI Revolution, I believe we humans will increasingly be searching for other humans to lean on, trust in, spend time with, & just be there for one another.
But equally, there are more & more reasons to stay indoors, play video games, watch netflix, ignore our neighbors, stick to our screens, & reinforce our social anxiety by doing so.
This should be very, very alarming for obvious reasons (without social connection & face-to-face interactions, we devolve as a species) & unobvious reasons (our connection to our devices becomes our preferred choice of interaction).
As we begin to put more & more trust into AI models, we put more & more trust in the AI companies behind them – marking a 2.7 trillion dollar combined valuation. This is creating an unprecedented amount of wealth for a very small group of technocrats.
People are treating their AI voice models like real people, confiding very sensitive information to these very few companies, whose privacy policies are primed for ad effectiveness not personal anonymity.
Originality is at the core of combating this trend and can be the future if we are adamant. People for thousands of years have used their ingenuity, creativity, & experience to write, create, talk, play, & produce original ideas – & still do!
Like this very blog post, which I am writing entirely on my own. Like I do every single blog post. This is not to taute my own originality, it is to stand by my own belief that I have plenty to say without the need for AI to expand my thoughts.
This is not to say that I don’t use spell-check or grammar-check in my posts, just that I steer clear of AI when it comes specifically to creative writing or asking for ideas.
The greatest books of all time, for instance, were written before this life-changing invention because we humans are pretty damn creative:
George Orwell’s 1984
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird
Homer’s Iliad & The Odyssey
Paulo Ochelo’s The Alchemist
C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, Witch, & the Wardrobe
Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Shakespere’s Romeo & Juliet
Frank Herbert’s Dune
Tolkein’s Lord of Rings
Emily Diceknson’s Poems
J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter
…just to name a handful
What makes these books so relatable is that they are written by real humans with real pasts, real problems, & real imaginations – & it’s a real problem when books are written by AI.
Characters are manifestations of an author’s friends, family, mentors, enemies, & colleagues. Books are filled with these incredible manifestations, sometimes consuming the author whilst creating them. Frank Herbert’s own son once told an interviewer that Paul Atredies was more of a son to his father than he was.
AI can and never will be able to create these kinds of characters because it has no real past of its own, filled with emotions tied to experiences. It’s like the hive mind humans in Pluribus that combine all neurological activity like knowledge & reasoning into one shared mind, but lack individuality & independent thought.
Will AI be able to create complicated, artificial memories in the future, sure, but will it have good & bad, right & wrong, past experiences to link those memories to, no. Because it cannot attach what it does not have to memory: emotions.
In a great interview with Michael Polen, he describes the biggest difference between us & AI being how we think vs how an AI bot thinks. That a single neuron in the human brain is equal to thousands of lines of code in an AI script.
We are the single most complex (emotionally & physically) creatures we have yet to discover in the universe. That complexity is something to take note of & something that enabled the greatest minds to develop AI in the first place.
As we learn how to adapt to AI, like we did with automobiles, office jobs, the internet, social media, & every technological shift in the last twenty years; we must not lose our humanity.
The simple yet most important quality to being human is our ability to talk, face to face with each other. If we lose this, we lose what it means to be human – & sadly, our youth is losing this profound ability every day.
I encourage you to step outside your comfort zone: talk to a stranger in the street, call a friend, plan a family gathering, or attend a social event.
You don’t have to be a massive extrovert to do this, it may take more effort, but it is so worth it! Afterall, it is through real connection with each other that makes us the most human!
Thank you so much for reading. I’m on this journey with Mindfulness & to ultimately become a better writer each day (and to put excuses why not to write behind the dream of reading a new book a month & publishing a book of my own by the end of the year).
Three More Things
April 12, 2026
Earth
It may not be “Earth Day” but to me, every day is a day to celebrate the Earth.
I found these powerful words etched on a plank of wood at the entrance to a hike in Roxborough State Park right outside Denver proper.
Take care of the land. Someday you’ll be a part of it.
I needn’t write it down as the message resonated enough to remember till this day. It is a simple message: treat mother nature as you would your own mother.
And just like the billions of mothers around the globe, mother nature gives and gives and gives without asking for anything in return.
And yes, we should give a damn about this world simply because we are a part of it. When we mistreat or more accurately turn a blind eye to the Earth and we mistreat ourselves.
This is a posture of waste vs frugality. Developed countries have taken so much waste and undeveloped countries are subjected to a life of frugality.
Use what you have, finish the food on your plate, fix the thing that is broken, and shop at the local thrift store; this is how I grew up.
As we began to tread the trail, we noticed signs of all kinds of plants along the way, a subtle nod to the diversity of the area.
This diversity reminded me of the difference in all life; from humans to bacteria to types of cells in our bodies to parts of our brains.
All life is connected, made of the same matter, and all working in sync, except for us. Well, most of the time at least.
If we are the only creatures on this planet to question our own existence, then we will question our purpose, but on a very basic level, we all have a fundamental purpose: to serve each other, the environment, and take care of ourselves.
On a very basic level, our animated flesh and bones are made of mostly carbon, the building block of all life. As with all things on Earth, from dust we came and to dust we shall return.
This stresses the importance of synchronicity with Mother Earth, its rise and fall to the sun, its reaction to the changing of seasons, its slow, steady hum that connects every living thing.
And the only way to observe, learn, and absorb this synchronicity is to immerse ourselves in nature: camping under a canopy of trees, bathing in the sounds of nature, swimming in the ocean, diving deep under the waves, stargazing in the desert, barefoot on the sand.
Take a moment today and tonight to appreciate nature and all the life it provides, jot down a few words about this powerful force.
Three More Things:
February 27, 2026