Chris Loper has been writing about self-improvement and helping busy adults with habit formation since 2017. He also writes an education blog for parents and students for Northwest Educational Services. Along with Greg Smith, Chris is the cocreator of Parenting for Academic Success, a series of transformative classes that create empowered parents, confident students, and harmonious families. His most recent endeavor combines his academic and habit-formation expertise to help students thrive in college. Visit SmartCollegeHabits.com to learn more. In 2021, Chris published a humorous memoir titled Wood Floats and Other Brilliant Observations, a book that blends crazy stories with practical life lessons. He lives in Issaquah, WA where he is the owner of South Cove Tutoring.
In every person, there is a complicated mixture of competing wants. We crave short-term pleasures, but we also want deeper, longer-lasting satisfaction. We like instant gratification, but we also want the rewards of delayed gratification, hard work, and patience. Here are some of the competing wants that I wrestle with: I want to sleep in, but I also want to have time for my daily self-care routine. I want to… Read More »What Do You Want More?
Last week, while making the case for discomfort training, I pointed out that pain is the price of admission if you want to enjoy the view from the top of a mountain. The very next day, my father and I went out to do just that. Our goal was Red Mountain, a thrusting pyramid of rust-colored rock at Snoqualmie Pass. We knew that the hike was hard work: It’s almost… Read More »Playing the Equanimity Game
It’s huckleberry season in the Cascades, which means hikers like me are gorging themselves on an overabundance of tasty berries. But these delicious treats aren’t available to just anyone. They’re not near the parking lot of any trailhead. The best berries grow at elevations of around 5,000 feet, so you have to earn them with time, sweat, and discomfort. As is often the case in life, pain is the price… Read More »Discomfort Training
In his book, Take the Stairs, Rory Vaden talks about an interesting observation he made about cows and bison during his childhood in Colorado. When a storm rolled in and started raining on the animals, the cows would run away from the storm, trying to avoid the rain. But because the storm was blowing in the very direction they were running, the cows would get rained on for longer than… Read More »Be a Bison, Not a Cow