A Practical Resource For Physical, Mental, and Spiritual Wellbeing

This website is a free offering of thoughts, tools, and teachings I’ve gathered along my wellbeing journey. The site is organized and sequenced the way I wish someone had handed it to me. I created this primarily for my three kids, but I hope my friends and their families can benefit too. I’m a professional investor, but I started my career as a teacher and coach, and this site is my way of getting back to those roots.

Building this has done something for me as well. They say you don't really know a subject well until you can teach it, and putting all of this into my own words has made these concepts and practices stick. It's easy to finish a good book and forget most of what we learned. Now everything I've found most useful lives in one place, and I have somewhere to return to.

I began this journey simply wanting better mental health and to stop drinking. Over time, with practice and the right tools, I discovered that I could do more than cope. I could actually thrive. What I found on the other side of mental health struggles and addiction was gratitude and joy, not the fragile kind that depends on good circumstances, but something more durable.

The word GratiJoy came to me on a bike ride in Colorado on a day so beautiful it was almost hard to take. I was so overwhelmingly grateful that the word gratitude didn't do the feeling justice, and then the name just landed in my consciousness and described it perfectly. William Blake said “gratitude is heaven itself.” And joy is a happiness that doesn't depend on outside circumstances. Put them together and you have what I think many of us are actually after. I named the site GratiJoy because it's where the practices I write about can take us, and because I've never stopped loving the word.

Science is catching up to what people have always known. Gratitude and joy don't just feel good. Gratitude practices measurably lower stress, and the states we spend time in shape the brain over time. Life will always include suffering, but alongside the pain we can cultivate GratiJoy through an integrated approach that includes physical, mental, and spiritual practices.

We see mental health struggles everywhere. I call it the darkness. In the U.S., more than one in five adults experienced a mental illness in the past year. Among young adults ages 18 to 25, more than one in three has a diagnosable mental health condition, the highest rate of any adult age group. Taken together, suicide and overdose now kill more young Americans than anything else. I personally have lost count of how many friends and acquaintances I have died to suicide and deaths of despair. I created this site to combat that darkness and to shine a light toward growth and healing.

We are all flooded with information, so I have gathered only what I believe matters most. You will find distilled insights from books, podcasts, and lived experience, offered with simplicity and efficiency in mind. Think of this site as a toolkit you can open when you need it. Take what helps and leave the rest.

Where to Begin

Not everyone arrives here from the same place. If you’re new to wellness, going through a difficult time, or simply not sure where to start, I recommend the Body section. Simple physical practices are the foundation of everything else, and small shifts there can create meaningful change quickly. If you’re starting from scratch, here is all you really need right now: walk, get some sunshine, sleep, and eat real food. Your life may change more than you expect.

If you already have a solid physical foundation and want to go deeper, start with Mind and Soul. The Mindset Series and the GratiJoy practice were written for people ready to move beyond coping and into something that actually changes them.

Wherever you are starting from, you are right where you are supposed to be.