Why I Love ZenPencils

Quotes! Comics! Inspiration! What's not to love?

On my bookshelf I have two (and only two) comics which I love: Calvin & Hobbes and ZenPencils which just came out this week!

If you haven't seen ZenPencils, do yourself a favor and check out one of my favorite comics here.

The Man Behind the Comics

I'm a huge fan of Gavin, founder of ZenPencils, and I love reading his comics every week. He is destined for incredible things and it's a pleasure watching him grow and learn as an artist.

If you remember, we were lucky enough to sit down with Gavin this summer in the Everyday Humanitarians conference. He was one of my favorite interviews and if you haven't seen him yet, you should! Check it out here.

Gavin was also a speaker at the World Domination Summit this summer too. Check out his amazing speech here.

He does a wonderful job of explaining how ZenPencils got started, how he ended up where he is now and even how he conquered his fears and got up on the stage in front of thousands of people to tell his story. I know he was nervous before the talk, but he was fantastic!

What I Love Most

Anyway, I wanted to share a little with you hear about Gav, tell you how incredible he is and why I love his comics so much.

We all need reminders of what matters most in life: love, wisdom, honesty, inspiration, integrity, and a little more love after that. Gavin's talent as an artist and his willingness to put himself out there so we can enjoy his art and his comics is amazing.

I'm very grateful for it every week and I hope you get a chance to see it for yourself.

Who knows, it might even change your life.

Gav in 6 Minutes

How You Know You’ve Been in Grad School Too Long

As I was graduating one of my favorite professors took me aside and told me a story,

Realizing you’re finally done can take a while. When I was walking across the stage on my commencement day I remember shaking the hand of my doctoral advisor and only thinking one thing: I know she is going to ask me to redo the 15 pages of references in my dissertation.

She didn’t of course and it was ridiculous for me to think that, but anyway, that’s how immersed we can get.

I love that story.

It’s been almost a week since I graduated and I have definitely felt my mind opening up and relaxing quite a bit in the past few days.

But last night I had a dream and it reminded me that I may have a little ways more to go.

Polar Bear Diagrams

In the dream I’m sitting down with one of my campus advisors and she says, “We need to talk about your paper.” The yellow cover of Leading Happiness is sitting on her desk and she opens it up.

I am filled with dread and confusion. I thought I was done days ago.

Inside I see diagrams and photos I never put in the paper. On several pages there are drawings of polar bears sleeping, eating and doing other fun things that polar bears do. “I wanted to tell you that I loved the improvements to the paper,” she says, “they make it much easier and more fun to read!”

I agree and take the paper to look through it. It’s littered with nonsensical diagrams and in the back section there are a few pages with coupons for combos at McDonald’s.

I hand it back to her, “I think my paper has been hacked.” I say something along those lines, not sure if plagarism includes adding coupons and polar bear diagrams to someone else’s thesis.

I sigh and realize I’m going to have to follow up on this and figure out who has done me the favor of making my paper “easier and more fun to read.”

As I woke up this morning dread turned to relief.

Pending surprise polar bears, my paper is just fine.

What’s Next

Several people have asked me, “What’s next?”

That’s a great question.

I’ll have a detailed answer for you on Friday, but for now the answer is… sleep.

Obviously I still need a little bit more.

Masters Graduation

I am very excited to announce that I am a proud Masters of Arts graduate of SIT Graduate Institute!

My thesis presentation on Leading Happiness went really well, thank you everyone for coming out to be there with me! It's been wonderful to sit back and relax now that everything is finished.

If you'd like to read my thesis Leading Happiness you can download it for free as a PDF here and at sit.edu.

You also can find it in paperback form here on Amazon.com.

The Presentation

I was also able to record my thesis presentation as well.

If you'd like to watch it, please click the video below.

Thank you everyone for your wonderful support.

Now I'm going to relax for a little while and next week I'm excited to update you on more exciting things to come!

What a Wonderful Experience at Our First Book Reading!

Thank you everyone for a wonderful turnout at our first book reading of Questions for the Dalai Lama!

We had a great experience and time really flew by, it had been an hour before I even knew it.

We told the story of how the book started (which you can see here), read excerpts from the book, answered fun questions from our audience, signed copies of the book and had lots of great conversations.

I look forward to more readings this summer and maybe even a chance to speak on VPR in a few weeks. I'll keep you posted on that.

Thanks again for your excitement everyone, this was a lot of fun!