Franklin Taggart's Unconventional Life Blog

Don't worry about the future. Learn to find a better feeling right now. It's amazing to see how the body-mind resets itself automatically when the fixated focus of our awareness lets go of a troubling thought. Today I'm working on taxes. My first reaction to taxes is usually dread. I dig up old memories of not being prepared, owing more money than I had, and facing penalties and debt. Remembering those things freaks me out a little. But I don't keep my focus there. As I sift through receipts, bank statements, and calendars, my awareness shifts to a larger story of my past year.  All the people I worked with were happy to pay me to work with them. All the things I was able to buy for myself and my family. All the ups and downs I made it through. As I start to think of all these other things, my feelings change. In this Coffee Break, I share my opinion that we get too wrapped up about creating our future through thinking that we forget we're actually creating our pres...

Do you ever wake up in a funk? I did this morning. I don't know if it was interrupted sleep, lower back pain, a case of the Mondays, or what, but I was in a low state. I've gotten away from the practice of labeling emotions positive or negative. Especially in the case of emotions that are uncomfortable or uneasy, I don't think it's helpful to add another layer of judgment on top of them. A few years ago I had an insight about the relationship between emotion and the human will. Distinct from willpower, the propensity to override our habitual tendencies and take "massive action", the human will is more like an energy management system. It monitors our energy levels and gives us data to make decisions about what we can commit to doing. Emotions are the language of will. When we have emotional states we consider low, it's because they reflect a lower level of energy. Anger is like the light that goes off when you're about to run out of gas. "Urgent m...

I believe that that core concern of our time is not political or religious at its root. I believe we are in the midst of a worldwide crisis of consciousness. If we look back over the relatively short history of humans on Earth, our recorded history is particularly minute. We've only been able to keep track of things for about 5000 years, but paleontologists are finding indications of the presence of humans that spans back into the hundreds of thousands of years, possibly even longer. Every generation learns more about our existence than the one that preceded it. Where 5000 years ago, myths and stories were used to relate histories and worldviews, now we have a much more complex understanding of where we've come from, where we've been, and where we're going. Even so, there are a large number of humans who are clinging to a worldview that doesn't take into account much that we've learned over the past 2000 years. In the course of my own lifetime I've experienc...

We have a rule in our house that whoever doesn't cook the meal does the dishes. While it seems fair on the surface, I'm not so sure. I'm a one pot kind of guy, and I tend to clean as I go most of the time, so that by the time I serve, there won't be a sink full of dishes other than the ones we eat from. My wife is a chef. The table is her canvas, and the kitchen her palette. We own three generations worth of cooking utensils of every variety, and I'm pretty sure that she uses most of them whenever she cooks. Now the bellywaddin' that I cook is comforting and filling. It won't show up on any Food Network shows, but for a hungry family it'll do just fine. Monica's meals are much more of a craft. She never uses recipes, except to bake, and she follows her whims and inspiration until there is a hearty, world class meal on the table. She's Italian, so most of the time it's Mangia! time around our house, which means that when she cooks, I do the di...

At Unity yesterday, Peggy asked me to give a short reflection on raising your vibration. I kind of giggled when she asked me because that language automatically taps on my woo woo button. I've had an ambivalent relationship with the Law of Attraction over the years. It seems to work really well for the people who teach it to others, but for those who are taught, I wonder??? In any case, I've had more than a few head scratching moments over the LOA. The idea that your vibration attracts your reality is an interesting one. I see friends who get so worried that having a low emotional state is going to wreck their entire lives that they don't realize it's the worry that's wrecking their lives. And the correlation that having a high vibration attracts to you all the stuff you want is also a bit strange. I know plenty of horribly miserable people who have everything they want. Their vibration appears to have nothing to do with it. So I decided to steer clear of the LOA in...

Yesterday when I was walking Vinnie, I realized that for the past several years I've been entranced by a fixation. This particular fixation is money. For at least the last 8 years I've been thinking about money, even when I haven't been thinking about money. Most of my waking hours are spent trying to figure out how to make more. It's the first thing I think about when I wake up, and the last thing on my mind as I go to sleep. This isn't the first time I've been fixated on something. In my late 20s through 30s I was focused on love and sex. My thinking was that if I just had love, my life would be OK, and love was translated as lots of sex. So I had a lot of relationships. I think the longest lasted about six months. Most were one date or one night. There was a flip flop pattern that went on for the duration in which I'd either be fleeing from someone clinging to me, or clinging to someone who was fleeing from me. I read a ton of books on getting and keeping...

A friend asked me what I believe. I had to think about that for awhile because over the past almost 20 years, I've not put a lot of stock in believing. I've been more inclined to let go of beliefs than hold onto them, and I can't say as I miss them. I spent a number of years learning how to articulate what I believed, mostly so that I could impress people with knowledge, and be seen as a leader in the evangelical circles I was a part of. It was a big game of approval seeking, both on a human scale and on the divine. Those beliefs have all been challenged to the core by life itself until I can say without irony that I don't believe in believing. That's one shade better than not believing in anything. I'm not an atheist, but I'm not convinced that believing in God is necessary. It would seem that God is self evident. Believing or not doesn't make it real, it just is. And I'm not agnostic either. I don't need to wait and see. I don't really have...

The Earth's atmosphere is a marvel. This layer of gases that are drawn close to the planet by it's gravitational pull makes life possible. It sustains and protects, providing aspiration to biological life, and shielding the planet and all of us from extreme radiation, allowing through just enough light and heat to make the planet habitable. Within the atmosphere, there is a constant fluctuation of pressure and temperature and energy. These forces manifest as different kinds of weather patterns. In Colorado it's not uncommon to see a change in temperature of 50 degrees or more in a few hours time. The weather can go from a blinding blizzard to calm, clear and sunny in a matter of minutes, and then back again. Atmosphere and weather patterns come to mind as a metaphor to understand the relationship between mind, consciousness and thought, and how these principles work to create our personal experiences of life. There isn't really a well defined boundary between the atmosp...

Vinnie is our Teacup Yorkshire Terrier. Four pounds of world domination that has me wrapped around his tiny paw. Up until we got Vinnie it had been many years since I'd had a dog, and I'd forgotten some of the perks. Of course the main benefit is the love. He's always happy to see me. And I'm happy to see him. Coming into the house feels so good, every time. He is also an amazing watchdog, though only as intimidating as a little guy can be. He thinks he's way bigger than he is, but his bark is loud and shrill enough to wake even me at the slightest strange sound. Tonight I'm appreciating another sweet aspect of dog ownership, a greater frequency of going outdoors. I wonder sometimes if half of Vinnie's body size is his bladder. Given how much he pees on his walks, you'd think that he might have more than one storage unit. Tonight before he goes back to join my early to bed wife, he comes and nudges me, his sign that it's time, and we go out to the ba...

I've always been a very deep feeling and emotional person, which has its pros and cons. As deeply as I can feel love and regard for people and situations, I can just as easily slip into wild bouts of anxiety, depression or rage. That's been a tendency for as long as I can remember. I've navigated the world by feel and have always thought that my feelings were a barometer of my circumstances, that they gave me an accurate read on what was happening in the outside world at large. Strong emotion has also been the root of my sense of being at the mercy of the whims of the world, and not completely responsible for my experience here. Recently I've learned that this was a misunderstanding, and not just a small one. About six months ago I was listening to the I Love Marketing podcast with Joe Polish and Dean Jackson. It's one of my favorites, and I recommend it to clients and friends frequently if they are in any kind of career where they have to learn how to market the...