Zen College Life

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Today I was made an uncle!  At exactly 7am this morning my sister gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Ava Layne Johnston.  She’s beautiful!  The pic doesn’t do her justice (she was sleeping). Read more »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

That’s right folks.  8 months down the road and I have reached 100+ posts.  I don’t know about you, but I’m excited.  And to celebrate, I’ve compiled a fantastic list of resources to hack your life and make you an amazing well rounded person.  This may be my favorite post yet.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

If your life is anything like mine you probably don’t have time to read all of these at once, so bookmark this article and read a little bit at a time. Read more »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

First of all, congratulations sir.  You campaigned honorably, didn’t fall to slander the way the republicans did, and you have already done America a great justice.  You have respectfully become the 44th president of the United States, and, through your great actions, you told every man, woman, and child that they can truly become whatever and whoever they want to be in this great land, providing they are willing to work for it.  For that, future president, I thank you. Read more »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I’ve been thinking a lot about motivation and inspiration.  I started swimming 5 weeks ago, and I’ve swam at least 5 times each week.  Sometimes I didn’t feel like swimming and did it anyways, but most of the time I really want to go.  I know what motivates me to swim; fitness and the fact that when I was young I used to go to my grandpas house many times throughout each summer and we’d bbq and swim in his pool.  I have very fond memories of those times, and I think that keeps me interested in getting in the water.  Read more »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

“Learn the art of patience. Apply discipline to your thoughts when they become anxious over the outcome of a goal. Impatience breeds anxiety, fear, discouragement and failure. Patience creates confidence, decisiveness, and a rational outlook, which eventually leads to success.” -Brian Adams

Who knew Brian Adams was so philosophical.  But he got it right, patience creates confidence, decisiveness, a rational outlook, which eventually leads to success.  We are 2+ weeks post Hurricane Ike, and though I didn’t feel the hurt of the hurricane, the damage around the city and surrounding cities and the power outages have given me the grand opportunity of exercising patience. Read more »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

The previous article was so deep and philosophical, I thought it might be nice to lighten things up a bit with a couple of Zen jokes I’ve collected from around the world wide web.  Enjoy!

• The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and a leaky tire.
• Always remember you’re unique, just like everyone else. Read more »
  

  If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I was recently approached by a student doing a paper on the Evolution of Zen.  She asked some pretty important questions, and I thought it would be a good idea to post them along with the answers here.  Maybe this will help us remember the importance and significance of everything we do in this life.  This one gets a bit deep.  Enjoy! Read more »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I got back to Houston thursday, and I’ve gotta say, I’ve never seen anything quite this bad.  Trees were uprooted and thrown around, fences had all but blown away, power was out at every other street light, and damage was everywhere.  But there is one thing I noticed that I would have never expected. Read more »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

School is on, full fledged.  I’m already only a week away from my first big test, Human Physiology.  It’s not going to be easy, and I’m already feeling the heat.  Stress left unmanaged can ruin us, especially students.  We not only have to worry about the stress of studying, but also the test taking.  No matter how much you’ve studied, we all still feel it.  But isn’t it strange how once you turn in the test, once you are finished, once you let go, all the stress goes away?  What if you could make that happen before the test was over? Maybe even before the test started? Read more »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

About a year ago I was faced with a comment that really struck close to home.  A person close to me made the statement, “what makes you such a good person? What do you do that is so good?”  At first I became really upset, I thought “how could you say that?”  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I considered myself a good person because I was not a bad person, not because I did anything necessarily good.  It was this realization that allowed me to turn my life around, to make minor and major changes and become a real ‘good person.’ Read more »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!