*Typing*

Try and outsmart the mind and you will lose. You will get pummeled. You will feel as though you're facing off in chest against Kasparov, Karpov or Kramnik. The mind is far too complex and our understanding of it is elementary at best. I'd wager that our exploration of the mind rivals that of the ocean. Just 5%. Instead, we must work to manipulate the mind––we must by-pass the mind through the body. To change the mind, we must change our physical state.

When we feel numb, we must submerge ourselves in cold water. When we feel anxious, we must control our breathing. When we lethargic, we must lie down for a 30-minute nap. When we feel angry, we must sprint a time or two against the wind. When we feel hurt, we must slip into a warm, tepid bath.

If we attempt to think our way out of these feelings, we will only dig ourselves deeper into them. The mind has evolved to find problems everywhere. It's how we've kept from going extinct at the hands of saber-tooth tigers, disease, famine, war, etc. Instead, we must circumnavigate the minds physically.

Two weeks back, my best friend's dad was in town. He was kind enough to take myself and several of my close friends out to dinner. We joked and made small talk as we put in our drinks and appetizers. Eventually my best friend's dad––"Father Rob" as he is affectionally called by us boys––posed a question to the table. "Okay, so how is everyone really doing?"

It was silent for a moment as the entire table felt very vulnerable––as if we were asked to strip naked and make a lap around the restaurant––but then someone spoke up. "I've been struggling to be honest––tomorrow is the ten year anniversary of my best friend's passing."

I had no idea. Neither did anyone else at the table.

Over the next two to three hours, we each gave our answer to Father Rob's question. By the end of the night, I was overcome with the realization that sometimes the people who we are closest with are the people we know the least.

I love the question, "How are you really doing?" Because it elicits a deeper response than just simply, "I'm doing well." Furthermore, it's a five-word mantra that can remind us to go deeper with our parents, our siblings and our friends.

Because unless we ask, we can never truly know how someone is really doing.

It's difficult to fully appreciate something until it's no longer there. I had this unsettling realization at 3 a.m. this morning when I found myself without an arm. Or, so I thought.

I was awoken from a dead sleep feeling that something was very much off. I felt an empty void on the right side of my body. I went to clutch my arm and was horrified by how foreign it felt––as if it did not belong to me but a stranger that had crawled into bed with me in the middle of the night.

I stood up, shook my arm around like a rag doll and massaged the feeling back into it until it felt like my own flesh again. As I laid back down and quickly drifted back to sleep, I remember feeling a sudden newfound appreciation for the limb I that had never truly possessed before.

One of the great challenges of the human experience is learning to truly appreciate before having lost. Loss is inevitable. It's as natural as the setting of the sun––and like the setting of the sun, it can't be prevented.

Robert Frost said it best when he wrote the words, "Nothing gold can stay."

Museum goers spend roughly 8 seconds gazing at a piece of art before moving onto the next. While that statistic is a bit unnerving, it's forgivable when we consider both our dwindling attention spans and the sheer number of artworks crammed inside a museum.

The Louvre, for example, is home to 35,000 pieces of art. Let's say you were to spend just 1 second looking at each piece of art in the Louvre. It would take you nearly 10 hours to get all the way through the museum. This begs the question: If you were to see the entire Louvre in a single day, would you have actually seen the Louvre? The answer is no.

You can't truly see a piece of art in 8 seconds (let alone 1), just like you can't truly see a person by simply glancing at them. Slow looking is a practice that encourages museum goers to spend not seconds but minutes––and sometimes hours––gazing at a single piece of art. A "Slow Looker" might take a trip to the Louvre and kill 3 hours gazing at The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault.

Slow looking is a reminder that it's far better to pay more attention to less than less attention to more.

Biomimicry is a branch of design that seeks to mimic the elements, systems, models and processes ever present in nature.

During the 2008 olympics, scientists were so closely able to replicate sharkskin in swimsuits, that they're now banned in major competition. An Architect named Mick Pearce applied lessons gleaned from studying Termite Mounds––which are unparalleled in their ability to regulate temperature––and applied them to build a 333,000 square-foot structure in Harare, Zimbabwe that uses 90 percent less energy. Engineers at MIT created a wet suit for surfers that imitates the blubbery pelt found on beavers. Wind Turbines were inspired by whale tails, velcro by burrs and paint from Lotus Flowers. The list goes on.

Nature has spent millions of years finding the best answers to the questions you're wrestling with. Go for a walk. Look around. Pay attention. You might just stumble upon an epiphany.