ALL EPISODES

I've hated people deeply. And if you're being honest, so have you, anyone who says they've never hated someone is lying to themselves, but is our nature truly so constraining that there's nothing for us to do about that? The more I think on my enemies, the harder it becomes to hate them, even if I still am at odds with them. I have found in my life that everyone I have ever spoken to thinks they're in the right. They'll gimme detailed arguments for why someone else was ter

So, arguing has this way of making us feel good about ourselves if we, quote, win an argument. It's got this competitive appeal. It's based on the domination of your opponent through wit, knowledge, or simply by overwhelming them to the point where they lose. They don't really see the point in responding back. Speaking for myself, it feels good to win an argument. Watching the other side sulk away in submission gives us kind of a validation that makes us think that we're

As I've gotten a little older, I've begun to notice all the small signs of aging beginning to show. I see the faint wrinkles starting to form and the rough skin that has seen way too much sun. When I began to notice these imperfections, I think it bothered me at first because I wasn't ready to accept that I was becoming middle aged. I think I'm past that now, but of course, I'd still prefer to have my youth if that's an option. But all things considered, I feel relatively co

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 - “Marshmallow People.” There are some really bad people out there. But then there are all the people that want you to think they're really bad, but actually aren't. It's easy to think we know w

I think when we talk about finding ourselves, it can mean a lot of things. But most of the time, in a practical sense, it means to learn how you want to move through life. Where I think we get stuck, though, is the idea that we need to find it. What matters to you in life does not necessarily reside in some deep corner of your soul that needs to be discovered. What matters is something you have to decide.

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by good advice? Like somehow, you're behind. If you're not waking up at four 30, journaling, meditating, cold plunging, eating liver, and starting a business by lunch, the truth is that nothing ever happens more than one step at a time, and you don't have to do everything. So, I was being a creeper the other day and I chose to listen in on a conversation that two guys at the gym were having.

I really dislike the word should. It's this incredible word that we use to describe not what a person is going to do, but what they are going to do if they're adhering to our perception of what is correct or right. When referring to myself, there are lots of things that I should do because I have values and a moral compass that my shoulds are based on. Where I struggle is when I find myself or others insisting so strongly that our version of should.

I've known a lot of smart people in my life. And I enjoy spending time with these people. They often have something interesting to say, but I've noticed that many of these hyper intelligent people in my life have kind of failed to meet the expectations that I had of them. I always thought these guys would be richer than me, or, or at the very least, have accomplished something meaningful.

In my line of work, people hire us to find things underground. And that being said, we come into contact with a lot of people that move dirt around for a living. In our modern era, most of that digging. Every once in a while, I'll come across a few guys that are waiting for an excavator to show up so they can start digging. Most of the time, these guys carry shovels in their trucks. In fact, almost always. I've seen guys waiting over an hour for an excavator to arrive when

When you die, your name has a shelf life. For some, it's going to be a lot longer than for others. It could be thousands of years before you're forgotten, but forgotten you will become. It may be hard to believe, but someday, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Taylor Swift, and the Beatles will all be forgotten, and likely sooner than you think.

You are a creative genius. The one thing you need to do to unlock your creative superpower is to subscribe to my paid creativity seminar. Kidding. I don't have anything to sell. But truly, I think creativity actually is for everyone. Humans like to label people a lot, whether it be smart, dumb, preppy, ghetto, this, that, et cetera. And maybe those labels are even true sometimes. But I think creativity is a little different, though. What we often label as creative is more

I was really confused for most of my life. Growing up, I always thought I had a good idea of the way of the world, but there were a lot of gaping holes in how I thought that just didn't address very much. In some ways, I was blissfully unaware of how confused I really was. Back then, I was definitely a little naive and even gullible. I just wanted to believe everyone I talked to in regard to whatever they were preaching to me, and I tended to assume other people must know

There's someone on Reddit who plans to shave their head and get a tattoo on it and then grow their hair back out so they can have a secret tattoo. A few years back, a ninety-nine-year-old Dutch woman asked to be handcuffed and put in prison even though she hadn't committed a crime. Why, you might ask? Well, because these things were on their “bucket lists”. These ones made me laugh, but when I really think of a bucket list, I tend to imagine the panic gasping of a drowning

I think we sometimes confuse having status with having] respect. Thankfully, respect isn't really something you can buy, inherit, or have bestowed upon you by another person or entity. It's truly not a thing to be passed around like a commodity, which is part of what makes it so valuable. A military platoon may report to a young officer, but the person with the highest respect may be one of the veteran soldiers who proved themselves in combat.

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.

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, and angry, but that's about all it can express. It doesn't really have the capacity to show us more nuanced feelings, and of course, a dog is unable to be introspective. People that don't have a lot of words to describe what they feel, get angry or sad or happy, but have limited capacity to comprehen

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