ALL EPISODES

What in life deserves our time and attention and what things don't. I hope that as we consider that question along with other topics on this show, that we can all learn to live our lives just a little more intentionally. This is Seth Roberts. Thanks for joining me on Skipping Stones - “Forgiving Ourselves.” Some people are basically ninjas when it comes to finding ways to avoid guilt and ownership of their wrongdoings. I just dedicated an entire episode to those types of peop

People will go to incredible lengths to protect their self-image. [ As much as we have the capacity to feel guilt over things we shouldn't feel guilty about, we also have the ability to smother that guilt and avoid it by stretching the truth, minimizing the seriousness of things, and blaming others. I don't entirely fault people for this.

A lot of people inherit money at some point in their life. But others inherit something far more valuable, and a lucky few might even inherit both. I've been one of those fortunate people who periodically has been gifted money from family members in the past. Nothing to make me rich, but more like a little here and a little there. Every time it happened though, it felt like a godsend, but of course, I'm not sure there's ever an untimely time for money to arrive. But as he

When I was a kid, there was a drink that was popular called Sunny Delight. I think they still sell it, but it's nowhere near as prevalent as it used to be. You might call it a type of orange juice, but that might be too generous of a term. I think maybe a more appropriate name might be orange flavored sugar.

What in life deserves our time and attention and what things don't. I hope that as we consider that question along with other topics on this show, that we can all learn to live our lives just a little more intentionally. This is Seth Roberts. Thanks for joining me on Skipping Stones - “We Need Words.” The remarkable thing about words is that they seem to make us smarter without words. We're relatively instinctual creatures. I think of a dog, for example. It gets happy, sad, a

What in life deserves our time and attention and what things don't. I hope that as we consider that question along with other topics on this show, that we can all learn to live our lives just a little more intentionally. This is Seth Roberts. Thanks for joining me on Skipping Stones - “Leveling Up.” I was feeling a little overwhelmed the other day, and for the first time in a very long time, I found myself playing a video game. I stayed up until 2:00 AM playing that stupid ga

What in life deserves our time and attention and what things don't. I hope that as we consider that question along with other topics on this show, that we can all learn to live our lives just a little more intentionally. This is Seth Roberts. Thanks for joining me on Skipping Stones - “Don't Let What You Have Keep You from What You Want.” I wonder sometimes if we're failing in life because we're trying too hard to protect the wrong things. Like is our fixation on avoiding fin

Inscribed on the Temple of Apollo in Delphi is the aphorism Know thyself. There are a lot of things worth knowing in this world, but knowing ourselves may be one of the most helpful of them all. It sounds so easy to figure yourself out from the time we are children. We're proud to announce our preferences and our strengths to each other. We all seem to think we know who we are, but in my experience, who we are is never so simple as saying. I like X, Y, Z, or I'm good at ya

What in life deserves our time and attention and what things don't. I hope that as we consider that question along with other topics on this show, that we can all learn to live our lives just a little more intentionally. This is Seth Roberts. Thanks for joining me on Skipping Stones - “You Have to Be Afraid.” Fear is the only real adversary we have in life. And in a way, it's the only thing you will ever have to face. But ironically, I think it's also the gateway to paradise.

If you have the luxury of being able to go on a journey of self-discovery in order to find yourself, I think you can count yourself amongst some of the more privileged of the world. For a lot of people, life doesn't really give them any choices of who to be. Finding yourself is irrelevant. When you're too busy staying alive to sit and ponder it.

The modern culture around parenting says we need to have our kids in sports programs, put them in the best schools, take them on nice vacations and dress 'em in really great clothes. But I kind of wonder if we traded in child raising for child worship instead. I can tell you as a father to three kids that I love being a parent, but it isn't always what we make it out to be in our imaginations. It comes with a lot of extra work that no one's going to pay us for. As a parent, I

You know, a surprisingly hard question for me to answer is. What would make for the best day ever? So, the quick answer that comes to mind would have to do with some kind of acquisition. Maybe winning the lottery would be the best day ever. That really sounds pretty nice. I'd love to win the lottery or win a new car or get some incredibly expensive thing handed to me. But when I think about my best days so far, they don't really have much to do with getting new things.

I think the best way to figure out what an ideal day is to ask yourself first, what a terrible day is to start. I think not sleeping enough would make for a pretty terrible day. I'd be agitated, my senses would be dull, and I'd probably be feeling lazy. If I really wanted to have a terrible day, I'd probably put some kind of intense pressure on myself. Maybe there'd be an important deadline that I forgot to prepare for, and I'd be filled with dread.

I wonder sometimes if we're deluding ourselves by thinking that to love another person is something that we actually choose to do. Is love really something we can decide to just have? All of a sudden, I'm not even sure two people are even talking about the same thing when they talk about love. In the English language, the word love is so broad. It could probably be applied to describe at least 50 different emotions. The love you have for your children isn't the same as the

t seems like men, in particular, me included, really like to think of things in terms of conquering and mastering. As unlikely as it is that any of us will conquer the world, it seems to reflect our desire to achieve. Conquering the world, of course, is the ultimate achievement. And so, I think that's what draws us to the idea.But for normal people, I think what's truly relevant is learning how to conquer our own time in order to conquer anything, whether that be the world or

What in life deserves our time and attention and what things don't. I hope that as we consider that question along with other topics on this show, that we can all learn to live our lives just a little more intentionally. This is Seth Roberts. Thanks for joining me on Skipping Stones - “Big Improvements Are Made of Small Ones.” Sometimes the difference between those that have everything and those that don't is a lot less than we might think. The more successful people that I m

I found myself reading an autobiography of Benjamin Franklin recently. Now, I love biographies, especially autobiographies. It makes me feel like I've had an opportunity and A small way to live another person's life. And in a metaphorical way, I aspire to be able to say someday that I've lived a thousand lives.

Porcupines seem to be a good example of this. Porcupines, to my knowledge, are not terribly aggressive animals. There are not very many predators willing to try to take them on. If a porcupine did have to face a predator, I don't think the porcupine would win very often. But the cost to any predator wanting to eat it is not going to be cheap.

Not crossing the road until the crossing light says go. Doesn't always benefit the individual, but it does make for a more predictable world that everyone else can rely on. I've had enough close calls with Jay Walkers that I think there may actually be some benefit to that one. Now in the United States and more broadly throughout Western civilization, we value independence above most things, and it seems to work well enough, but the concept that one should strive towards maki

We become afraid to try things unless we think we can do it perfectly the first time. And it isn't even the parent's fault half the time because we put this pressure on ourselves just as much as anyone else. One of my children tends to panic really easily if something doesn't go right, or they mess something up.